A rush-hour crawl that gave vehicles little momentum to slide into the river and a bridge design that minimized falling debris appear to have kept the death toll relatively low in the collapse of a bridge into the Mississippi River.

By SHARON COHEN and ADAM GELLER MINNEAPOLIS - Roughly 150 cars, trucks and at least one school bus crawling bumper-to-bumper on a bridge that suddenly crashes into the Mississippi River could have been a recipe for a massive death count.