Report: 34 Percent of Major Roads Are in Poor, Mediocre Condition

Its been known for decades that the infrastructure in America is crumbling. The Minneapolis bridge collapse, along with recent underground explosion in NYC, are the latest examples of a collapsing America. The politicians know about this and refuse to do anything about it. Will you be next the victim?:

Highway engineers say the neglect of America's infrastructure costs lives every day. More than 40,000 people die in highway accidents each year.

Road conditions, the engineers say, are a factor in almost one-third of those deaths.

America's most important road system — 46,000 miles of interstate highway — is now half a century old.

A report card two years ago from the American Society of Civil Engineers said that 34 percent of major roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

And that's not all.

The civil engineers say the number of unsafe dams has risen by more than 33 percent in the past two years, and in that time, there have been 29 dam failures.

Power capacity isn't keeping pace with demand, and the power grid needs $10 billion a year invested over the next five years.

And, according to civil engineers, 27 percent of U.S. bridges are structurally deficient.

Here's another stat that might get your attention:

As 2007 began, at least 73,694 of the nation's 596,808 bridges, or about 12 percent, were classified as "structurally deficient," Federal Highway Administration figures show. They include 816 built as recently as the early 1990s and 3,871 that are nearly a century old,

It is unclear how many of those spans pose actual safety risks.