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Please Don't Drive Your Moving Truck On Storrow Drive

Ah, the beginning of the school year in Boston. You can smell it in the air: The students crowding on the T with their massive backpacks, the once-empty bars now crammed with people, the mattresses on every corner in Allston — and of course, The Storrowings.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "storrowed" is what happens when someone drives a large box truck onto Storrow Drive in Boston, unaware that the road's bridges have a height limit of 10 feet (despite the many, many signs on the on-ramps indicating that).

It can be a minor (though annoying) mistake: "We do have to stop all the traffic in that area," Massachusetts State Police Trooper Dustin Fitch, state police's social media specialist, told WBUR a few years ago, "and then literally back the truck up until there is an exit that we can get them off of that is not restricted by height."

Or it can be a disaster:

The same goes for Memorial Drive in Cambridge, by the way:

It often happens around Boston's biggest move-in week, as many of the leases on the city's apartments end Sept. 1. The "storrowings" add to the chaos of moving trucks double-parked on narrow streets, extra back-to-school traffic from primary and secondary schools and out-of-towners rightfully confused while navigating Boston's converted cow paths.

And it keeps happening despite many, many warnings from state police, social media and the city itself:

Maybe we can blame our GPS for this. We checked out the Google Maps and Apple Maps and didn't see any options for setting height restrictions (though you can have directions in both that avoid tolls and/or highways).

It's not clear when Bostonians started using the terms "storrowed" or "storrowing," but Google Trends shows it first popped up in September 2014.

And it doesn't just happen around Labor Day weekend, either:

So now that you know what can happen, you know what to do: Pack your boxes, throw away your trash, double-check your lease and remember: Don't drive your moving truck on Storrow Drive. 

Related:

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Meghan B. Kelly Multi-platform Editor
Meghan is the multi-platform editor for WBUR.

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