A grisly accident on Kenya’s notorious Nithi Bridge claimed a dozen lives on August 31, 2024, sparking the circulation of an image purportedly showing the dangerous crash zone where the tragedy happened. However, the claim is false; the widely shared image shows an expressway in China that is visibly different from Kenya’s Nithi Bridge.
Hours after news of the horrific crash went viral online, a Facebook post surfaced with an image of an elevated overpass curving around a mountain covered by trees.
“Nithi bridge in Meru-Embu highway, a dangerous black spot (sic),” reads the caption.
A “black spot” refers to a notoriously dangerous section of road.
The following day, another Facebook post repeated the claim but was deleted after being shared more than 100 times.
However, the same claim and image appeared again in a Facebook post as well as on X (see here and here).
Horrific crash
Twelve people were killed on August 31, 2024, when a 10-seater van collided with a pickup truck at the Nithi Bridge on the Embu-Meru highway in the eastern region of Kenya (archived here).
According to local reports, the victims were part of a group that had just attended a parental blessing ceremony and shared a video of their celebrations on social media shortly before the tragedy.
Nithi Bridge is regarded as one of Kenya’s most dangerous roads (archived here).
But the image circulating online does not show Nithi Bridge.
Chinese highway
A reverse image search led to civil engineering accounts on Facebook and X that published the image on April 8, 2024 (archived here and here). They identified the bridge as the “Xuguang Expressway” in China.
AFP Fact Check in Hong Kong found a clip of the bridge on the Asian video-sharing platform Bilibili (archived here).
The video’s caption describes the structure as the Dubu Elevated Bridge, the “highest viaduct in Asia”, and a part of the Xuguang Expressway in Qingyuan, Guangdong.
A comparison of the images in the false posts and the video on Bilibili shows the bridge’s supporting pillars and the yellow guard railings next to the road are the same.
The same section of the expressway is also visible on Baidu Maps and Google Maps.
As Google Maps shows, Kenya’s Nithi Bridge has a completely different structure.
Nithi is less elevated than the bridge in China, with silver-coloured barricades in place, not yellow.
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