VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — The driver of a tractor-trailer that went over the side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT) Thursday afternoon died after being rescued. CBBT spokesman Tom Anderson confirmed the driver died when he was on the way to the hospital. 
 
 Authorities identified the driver as 47-year-old Joseph Chen, of Greenville, North Carolina. Chen was hauling a load of seafood for Evans Transports, which is based out of Washington, North Carolina. 
 
 The Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Chen’s death to be accidental. The cause was drowning and hypothermia. 
 
 A relative of Chen’s in Greenville says Chen is a father and husband, WAVY affiliate WITN reports, as well as the founder and president of Turn-N-Burn Motorcycle Club. 
 
 The tractor-trailer went into the water on the southbound side of the CBBT at mile marker 15 around 12:30 p.m. Navy spokesman Cmdr. Dave Hecht said a crew with HSC 2 out of Norfolk was in the area training when police called for help. That crew responded in an MH-60 Sierra and pulled the driver out of the water. WAVY’s Erin Kelly tweeted that officials said the driver was standing on top of the vehicle before he was hoisted into the helicopter. 
 
 Video of the scene from Chopper 10 shows a large section of damaged guardrail on the side of the bridge. 
 
 CBBT officials tweeted Thursday afternoon that the bridge was closed on both sides due to an incident. Both sides of the bridge-tunnel were reopened before 2 p.m. 
 
 Bridge officials issued Level 2 wind restrictions Thursday, with winds exceeding 47 mph. There was a Level 1 restriction at the time of the accident. 
 
 The CBBT is currently operating with Level 2 wind restrictions. Winds are in excess of 47 mph. #Caution — CBBT (@FollowTheGulls) February 9, 2017 
 
 Under a Level 2 restriction, tractor-trailers must be hauling a gross payload of 30,000 pounds, in addition to the weight of the rig. 
 
 Charles Lattimore, of Chesapeake, said he and about 30 other truck drivers on the Eastern Shore were cleared to cross before he learned of the crash on the radio. He was headed to Norfolk, but pulled over about a mile north of the bridge-tunnel, worried his own truck would be too light. 
 
 “When I knew he had went over, I knew I wasn’t heavy enough, so I didn’t take the chance,” Lattimore said. 
 
 He said he crosses the bridge-tunnel about twice a week. 
 
 “On a windy day, you can feel it, and you’ll be pushing your trailer and your tractor to the left or the right, whichever way the wind is blowing. You can actually feel it; it’s a hurting feeling and you know of course I said a prayer for him and that was before I heard that he died. I was hoping that he was going to make it.” 
 
 Super Doppler 10 Meteorologist Ashley Baylor says the water temperature was 45 degrees with a wave height between five and seven feet at the time of the accident. 
 
 The Virginia Trucking Association issued this statement: 
 
 We take safety very seriously. It is certainly a tragedy any time we lose someone. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family, friends, and fellow employees of the victim.” – Dale Bennett, President & CEO, Virginia Trucking Association 
 
 WAVY News has covered previous incidents of tractor-trailers going overboard while traveling on the CBBT. The most recent accident was in January of 2016. That driver was rescued and survived. 
 
 In May 2014, a tractor-trailer went into the water after it hit a maintenance truck on the bridge; that driver died. 
 
 Stay with WAVY.com for updates to this developing news. ||||| Morgan Lake describes what it was like to fall off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in her car, and what she did to survive. (The Washington Post) 
 
 Morgan Lake describes what it was like to fall off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in her car, and what she did to survive. (The Washington Post) 
 
 The car went off the side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and into the water. It began to fill up, and the 22-year-old driver believed she was drowning. 
 
 But Morgan Lake of Calvert County said she made the decision not to die in the water and told herself “you can do this.” 
 
 And she climbed out of the car, through a shattered window, and swam to safety, becoming the central figure in a story of survival that has attracted vast attention. 
 
 It began shortly after she drove onto the bridge Friday night, on her way to Philadelphia to visit friends and relatives. The terror took hold when she looked in the rearview mirror and saw a tractor-trailer “coming full speed.” Her car was struck, police said. 
 
 According to authorities, the car hit the barrier at the side of the bridge. That pushed her car back onto the roadway, but then it was bumped by the tractor-trailer a second time. That propelled it upward 3½ feet to the top of the concrete Jersey wall. 
 
 The car straddled the wall for a time, according to police and to Lake. 
 
 But then, she said, it tipped over, and she was falling for what “felt like eternity.” 
 
 It seemed almost to be happening in slow motion, Lake said. 
 
 Then the car hit the water, its windshield and the driver’s side window shattered. 
 
 Early reports had estimated the car dropped 40 feet or more, but investigators now say the vehicle fell 27 feet from the bridge. 
 
 The car filled with water, Lake said, and she “felt I was going to die.” She said she actually “started to drown.” 
 
 But then, she said in a telephone interview late Sunday, “I got myself together” and refused to drown. 
 
 Morgan Lake survived after her car plunged several feet from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. She is photographed in Dunkirk, Md. on July 22. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) 
 
 She told herself that she could save her own life, and she did. 
 
 “I went from panic to calm,” she said. She proceeded in steps, first unbuckling her seat belt, then grabbing the window and getting out of the car. 
 
 She said it seemed to take a long time to reach the surface. She gasped for air as many as five times. She looked around and began to swim. 
 
 Her mother, Melani Lake, said she knew her daughter was an incredible athlete. But “we didn’t know she could swim like that.” 
 
 She credited her daughter’s “sheer will to survive.” 
 
 For her part, the daughter, a student at the College of Southern Maryland, described herself as “blessed to be alive.” 
 
 She said she learned that “there’s a Superman and a Superwoman in everyone.” The important thing, she said, is “just not to give up.” 
 
 When the car went into the water, it was not far from the bridge, which is supported at that point by a series of pillars. 
 
 How far Lake swam was not completely clear Sunday night. Her account, as well as that of an Anne Arundel County fire department official, indicated that she reached rocks that surround the base of one of the bridge supports. However, a police officer said witnesses told investigators that she swam several hundred feet to a jetty. 
 
 Division chief Keith Swindle of the Anne Arundel County Fire Department said a boater in the area went to her aid and stayed there until the arrival of the county’s fire boat and a boat from the Maryland Natural Resources Police. 
 
 After initial treatment, Lake was placed on a police boat and then flown by helicopter to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. She was released Saturday from the hospital. 
 
 The police officer said it was first believed that she had suffered fractures, but he said her injuries turned out to be only bumps and bruises. 
 
 Lake said she was still experiencing considerable pain Sunday night. 
 
 In their account of the crash, released Sunday, Transportation Authority Police said Lake was driving alone on the eastbound span of the bridge about 8:30 p.m. Friday when her car and another one were struck by a tractor-trailer. 
 
 The other vehicle, a Mazda, remained on the bridge, and neither occupant was injured. 
 
 The driver of the truck, Gabor Lovasz of Canada, was not injured, police said. 
 
 No charges have been filed, but an investigation is ongoing, a spokesman for the Transportation Authority Police said. The authority plans to stage a re-enactment of the crash Monday as part of its investigation. 
 
 Authorities said the crash occurred less than a quarter-mile from shore and shut down the eastbound span of the bridge for about two hours. 
 
 The car was removed from the water Saturday. 
 
 The 4.3-mile arched, dual-span Bay Bridge, which rises 186 feet above the bay at its highest point, has long terrified some motorists. Crossed by more than 25 million vehicles annually, it connects Washington’s urban centers and suburbs with Ocean City and other coastal communities — and can provide a white-knuckle driving experience, even in the best of conditions. 
 
 “The Bay Bridge has everything to fear, not just height,” the late psychotherapist Jerilyn Ross once told The Washington Post. “Water, traffic, claustrophobia — anyone who’s prone to suffer from a phobia has a problem with the bridge. It’s the feeling of being so close to death.” 
 
 For years, police offered to drive cars over the bridge for phobics; more recently, entrepreneurs have done the same. In 2010, Travel + Leisure magazine named it one of “the world’s scariest bridges.” 
 
 But accidents in which cars go flying off the bridge into the water are extremely rare. 
 
 “It is very uncommon for this to happen,” said 1st Sgt. Jonathan Green, a Maryland Transportation Authority Police spokesman. 
 
 The last time before Friday, he said, was 2008, when a three- 
 
 vehicle accident sent a chicken-filled 18-wheeler through a concrete wall and into the water, killing the driver, John R. Short of Willards, Md. 
 
 Another motorist died in an accident in 2011, after his car broke down on the bridge. He stepped out of the vehicle, which was subsequently struck by a truck. The force of the crash sent Harry Blauvelt, a retired sportswriter, into the water. 
 
 Julie Tate and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this report.
– A blustery day on a Virginia bridge led to a truck driver's death Thursday, the AP reports. Joseph Chen, a 47-year-old employee of Evans Transport, was crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in his tractor-trailer around 12:30pm, shortly after weather reports had indicated a Level 1 wind advisory, meaning winds were clocking in at over 40mph, the Virginian-Pilot reports. The North Carolina man was driving his truck southbound when his vehicle went over the side and into the 45-degree Chesapeake Bay. As his truck began to sink, Chen was spotted standing atop it, offering hope he'd survive the freak accident. But after a Navy chopper pulled him from the water, he died en route to the hospital. Just 30 minutes after Chen's truck was swept off the bridge, the wind advisory was raised to a Level 2, which means winds had crept up past 47mph. Between 1964 and 2011, 10 vehicles driving over that bridge have met similar fates, with only one survivor out of the bunch, per Virginian-Pilot records. A truck driver who crosses the bridge a couple of times a week tells WAVY "on a windy day, you can feel it" and that his truck will sway from left to right, depending on the wind's direction. Meanwhile, Chen's wife, Billie Jo, tells the Virginian-Pilot her husband "was off the chain." They would've marked their 10-year anniversary in April. She added her husband, whom she said was "awesome," had two kids from a previous marriage. (A truck fell from the sky in San Diego.)