Here's a newbie mistake...

My opinion is he should have backed up.....PERIOD!

I know many of us,myself included that had to back up on a skinny 2 lane because of stuff like that.

Hell,I did it just a couple months ago in the dark until i found a side road to back in to.
I came around a curve and the road was closed for some festival...no warning signs period!
I had to get all the 4 wheelers behind me to turn around and one guy was nice enough to walk behind my trailer stopping traffic...he walked well over a mile making cars turn around.

Crap happens and you just got to deal with it...
NO WAY i would have crossed a 15T bridge.

 

I know it's kinda late in the posting, but the answer is it depends.
My brothers house in Texas shows the snow melting from the Feb. 09 snow storm. They get snow about once every 10 years or so, so it's fairly easy to pinpoint the year.

And here in my neck of the woods, there was a bridge removed for construction in summer of 09, and it's on google satellite vie as being gone.
That was at I75 in MI and around mm 118 (not sure the official exit number)

Steven