At around 3 a.m. on 19 May, a section of the bridge at the Stara Gradiska (Croatia) and Bosanska Gradiska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) border crossing collapsed. Nobody was hurt, but the crossing - one of the busiest in the region - is closed until further notice.

The Croatian Auto Club (HAK) confirmed that all traffic has been suspended. Aerial footage from the site shows serious structural damage - a whole section of road has collapsed, with the railing going down first. How exactly it happened - the investigation will have to answer. How one of the most heavily used bridges between the two countries went down in the middle of the night with no prior warning - that's the question citizens are asking and inspectors owe them an answer to.

Vehicles were immediately redirected to neighbouring crossings - Kostajnica, Kozarska Dubica and Gradina. Wait times in the first hours were 10 to 30 minutes, but authorities expect significantly longer delays during the day. For transit traffic between the Balkans, Central Europe and the northern Adriatic, this is a body blow at a moment when the summer tourist season is already underway.

Balkan infrastructure ages without a plan. Bridges, roads and rail routes - all inherited from Yugoslavia - are maintained ad hoc, with interventions instead of a long-term strategy. When a bridge goes down, a detour is built and signs are put up. A systematic safety review of every bridge? That's a different budget, a different political will - and over time, always less of a priority.

The question we have to ask is trivial but uncomfortable: how many bridges in Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania have actually been seriously checked for structural stability lately? No one wants to give the answer. Which is why bridges go down in the night - and we wake up surprised.