MINNEAPOLIS -- As she drove northbound on Interstate 35W on Aug. 1, 2007, Anne Nicolai didn’t even realize she was on a bridge.

“As usual, I was gabbing away on my cell phone and missed the exit I was supposed to take,” she said Thursday morning. “I ended up on the 35W bridge in a place I wasn’t supposed to be…I noticed that the big signs fell away from me and it looked like they fell onto the highway,” she said.

Video: 35W Bridge Survivor Rides Across New Span

What Nicolai didn’t realize at the moment is that she was just feet away as the 35W bridge collapsing into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

“People who have studied the videotapes and did see my car tell me that I was three seconds from being on one of the decks that fell,” she said.

After more than 13 months of construction, the bridge reopened Thursday morning. Nicolai and thousands of others drove back across it for the first time since last August.

Driving Over Bridge For First Time Since Collapse

Nicolai, a Minneapolis-based independent media consultant, does not feel like her experience on the bridge last summer has drastically changed her life. In fact, she hesitates to even classify it as a near-death experience.

“I am not blasé about it, but at the same time I am not going to analyze it,” she explained as she drove northbound on 35W toward the rebuilt section of the bridge.

“I’d go nuts if I tried to figure out why I am still alive,” she continued. “I just don’t think about those three seconds a lot.”

Nicolai remained calm as she approached the new section of bridge, which reopened to public traffic just hours earlier.

She pointed out the exit that she was supposed to get off on the night of the collapse. She noted that you can’t even see water when you approach the bridge from the south. She had no idea she was even near a bridge when it collapsed.

Nicolai had little to say for the 10 seconds that she drove over the bridge.

“That was it?” she commented, anticlimactically as she passed onto the old highway again.

It wasn’t until she turned around and re-crossed the bridge in a southbound direction that the emotion of the moment seemed to grab her, spurred by the sight of water.

The Mississippi River is much more visible when going southbound and it is evident that you are on a bridge.

“This is a little scarier, this is weird,” she said on the return route. “My heart is beating faster, I am seeing the perspective of the people who were hurt the worst, the people coming south.”

“It’s very, very scary when you see it from this angle.”

New Bridge Opens Ahead Of Schedule

The new Interstate 35W bridge is open in Minneapolis a little more than a year after the last one collapsed into the Mississippi River.

A procession of vehicles led by state troopers, emergency vehicles and state highway trucks led motorists across the bridge in both directions shortly after 5 a.m. Thursday.

Traffic was heavy as a mix of cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses started streaming across the bridge. Vehicles moved slowly at first, but then picked up speed.

Many vehicles honked their horns as they drove across, and a few motorists waved American flags.

Before the opening, traffic was backed up about a mile in both directions. Some had been waiting downtown since midnight, KSTP-TV in Minneapolis reported. Lt. Mark Peterson of the State Patrol said that cars were not allowed to line up until 4:45 a.m., news reports said.

The old bridge collapsed on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

The new $234 million bridge has 323 sensors that will generate an extensive record of how it handles the stresses and strains of traffic and Minnesota's harsh climate.