The second incident came on the morning of May 9, 1980, when the freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a support pier near the center of the bridge during a sudden squall, resulting in the catastrophic failure of the southbound roadway and the deaths of 35 people when several vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, plunged into Tampa Bay.

Owing to the 1980 disaster, the current bridge incorporates numerous safety features to protect the structure from ship collisions.

"Jim" Foley, a realtor, and his partner Charles R. Carter joined with James E. Bussey, an attorney, to create the Bee Line Ferry Company.

[7] Sometime during 1927, Simmonds received congressional approval and a permit from the US War Department to build a bridge, but efforts were put on hold due to the Great Depression.

[16] In 1929, the Florida Legislature gave the Bee Line Ferry a 50-year franchise to operate a service between Pinellas and Manatee Counties.

[18] In 1944, the St. Petersburg Port Authority bought the franchise from Bee Lee and resumed ferry service, albeit on a smaller scale until the end of the war.

[20] Bail, Horton, and Associates, along with Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hogan & Macdonald received a contract from the port authority on December 20, 1944, to design the bridge.

[22] Bail, Horton, and Associates was awarded the contract but as it was unable to get $10 million in revenue bonds, the state government halted the project sometime during the late 1940s.

The Florida's State Improvement Commission proceeded to at some point take over the St. Petersburg Port Authority's assets which included $520,000 seen with bonded indebtedness.

[23] On July 4, 1950, a day-long "Spans Across the Bay" festival was held in St. Petersburg to celebrate the approval of the long-awaited bridge and to announce its name.

[12] Over 20,000 entries were submitted, and at the celebration on the Fourth of July, Virginia Seymore of nearby Indian Rocks Beach was announced as the winner for her submission of "Sunshine Skyway".

[12] It was built by the Virginia Bridge Company[24] and another firm that was involved doing engineering work was Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hall and McDonald.

Opening of the newer span was delayed until 1971 for reinforcing of the south main pier, which had cracked due to insufficient supporting pile depth.

Several vehicles were at the top of the bridge when almost a quarter-mile of roadway fell away beneath them while others drove off the edge, either because the drivers did not notice the collapse in the driving rain or could not stop quickly enough in the wet conditions.

[33] A few drivers, including former Major League Baseball player Granny Hamner, were able to stop their vehicles before reaching the gap, and as seen in many photographs of the aftermath, a Buick Skylark driven by local car dealer Richard Hornbuckle skidded to a halt just two feet from the chasm.

[34][35][36] In the water below, several small official and private boats and a transportation department diving team arrived soon after the intense but narrow squall line cleared the vicinity.

[37] The only survivor of the fall was Wesley MacIntire, whose Ford Courier pickup truck had bounced off the hull of the Summit Venture and into the water.

The truck sank to the shallow bottom of the bay, but MacIntire managed to escape and swim to the surface, where he was quickly pulled to safety aboard the freighter.

[39] John Lerro, the veteran harbor pilot who was steering the ship at the time of the accident, was cleared of wrongdoing by both a state grand jury and a Coast Guard investigation.

The investigations concluded that the inbound freighter had been in the process of maneuvering into the narrow channel under the center of the bridge when a microburst containing sudden torrential rains and 70 mph (110 km/h) winds cut visibility to near zero and temporarily rendered the ship's radar useless.

[43] While the main support pier nearest to the channel withstood the strike with only minor damage, a secondary support pier just to the south was not designed to withstand such an impact and failed catastrophically, causing the entire center of the southbound span to collapse at 7:38 a.m.[29] Soon after the disaster, the undamaged northbound span was converted back to a two-lane, two-way bridge while the state of Florida considered proposals for a replacement.

Ideas included the construction of a tunnel (which was deemed impractical due to Florida's high water table) and a simple reconstruction of the broken section of the old bridge, which would not widen the narrow shipping lane.

[47] In 1990, the FDOT awarded a bid to Hardaway Company (owner of Controlled Demolition, Inc.) to demolish all steel and concrete sections of the older Sunshine Skyway spans.

Accompanied by his wife, he stopped at the apex of the bridge and dropped 35 white carnations into the water, one for each person who died in the disaster.

In response to the high number of suicide attempts from the bridge, Florida installed six crisis hotline phones along the center span in 1999, and began 24-hour patrols.

[55] Two years later, Sean Michael Davis of Rhino Productions was inspired by his haunting experience witnessing a woman get out of her car and immediately jump off the bridge before anyone could intervene to create a not-for-profit film titled Skyway Down.

His objectives were to deter other potential jumpers by "'punch[ing] them in the face' with interviews with survivors and family members",[56] to give them "hope and to try to de-glorify the romanticism of the bridge",[57] in part by informing those who have "mulled a leap to know about the bloody, battered aftermath.

Traffic on the bridge is monitored by the Florida Highway Patrol, and a bicyclist, pedestrian, or stopped vehicle results in a police dispatch.

A major problem with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is corrosion of the steel in the precast concrete segmental columns on the high-level approaches.