Trucks are motor vehicles designed to carry and transport big and bulky materials, but there is always a limit to how heavy is too heavy. This overload of a truck is often the culprit behind serious truck accidents on America’s roads. When the bed of a truck or trailer is overloaded, then it can cause rollovers, tire blowouts, jackknifing, and other potentially deadly types of accidents.
It’s important to understand why there are legal safety standards behind loading cargo into trucks and how, when those safety protocols are violated, the truck driver and their company can be found legally liable for damages and personal injury.
Legal Standards for Weight of Cargo
In order to best prevent severe truck accidents from taking place, there is a strict guideline pertaining to how much weight a truck can safely carry and transport. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) outlines that the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) must not exceed 26,000 pounds for any type of commercial truck. Yet, according to the FMCSA’s latest year of reporting, 83.1% of fatal truck accidents involved trucks carrying cargo exceeding the standard maximum of 26,000 pounds.
It can be argued that there is a direct causation between the amount fatal truck accidents there are in the US and how many of those trucks had an illegal overload. There is a high likelihood that these deadly truck accidents could have been avoided if only the truck driver, trucking company, and shipping company decided not to violate legal standards and overload their commercial trucks.
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There are a handful of certain types of commercial truck accidents that are often caused by overloading the vehicle. It can be useful to be able to identify how overload plays a direct cause in these serious truck accidents. With tire blowout accidents, the increased weight from the overload puts so much pressure on the tires that they eventually give out, causing the driver to lose control of the motor vehicle.
With truck rollover accidents, overload causes the truck’s center of gravity to shift in a dangerous way. Usually, the cargo will be too top-heavy, causing issues when the vehicle is turning and leading to a rollover accident. Also, with overloading a truck, there is the possibility that the cargo could actually spill out of the vehicle onto the road, causing another car to hit it and crash.
This shows that with overload, it is not always about the weight of the cargo, but it can be the number of units and overall size of the cargo.
There are many other types of accidents that can occur as a result of overload. According to the Association for the Work Truck Industry (NTEA), these other types of accidents can include the tractor-trailer naturally picking up speed while driving downhill, the truck not being able to go uphill and rolling backward, the heavyweight of the truck can damage the road it is driving on, and hitting a bump or a curb can have a lot more of a severe result compared to having a safe amount of cargo.
How Does Truck Overload Even Happen?
One might think that overload on a commercial truck is super easy to avoid because all the truck drivers and shipping companies have to do is follow the safe, legal standards set by the FMCSA. Measuring the commercial truck’s weight can be quite challenging because there is a lot that goes into it. They have to measure the curb weight (the standard weight of the vehicle when it is not carrying any cargo), the payload capacity (the amount of weight that can be safely added to the truck’s curb weight), and the gross vehicle weight rating (how much the truck can weight with both the curb weight and payload capacity put together).
It can be very easy for a truck driver, a trucking company, or a shipping company to make an error during the loading process and put on too much load weight for the vehicle. Tractor tailor overload can also occur when the truck driver, trucking company, or shipping company is neglectful of proper protocols. The shipping and logistics industry is fast-paced and stressful.
Sometimes truck drivers and their trucking corporations are going to want to cut every corner that they can in order to meet their quotas and make more money. This can lead to them purposefully neglecting to take the time and examine if they have met proper safety protocols. With the help of a seasoned truck accident lawyer from BDIW, these truck drivers and trucking companies can be sued if they engage in these practices and a serious truck accident results from it.
How a Truck Accident Lawyer Can Help You
Truck accidents cause significantly more damage per accident than other motor vehicle accidents in the US. Yet, they are also one of the most uncontested types of vehicle crashes in the courts.
This is because victims of commercial truck accidents are too afraid to file a claim against a large trucking or shipping organization. They believe that there is no hope of winning even if they do file the claim. There is no need to continue to suffer alone with the personal injuries that you sustained from a truck accident that was not your fault at all.
A truck accident attorney from BDIW has the resources and expertise to ensure that you have a fighting chance when it comes to receiving financial compensation from the large trucking corporations that caused you personal injury. That financial compensation package can be based on medical bills, physical therapy costs, prescription drug costs, loss of wages, loss of consortium, insurance costs, and overall pain and suffering. We also intend to hold them accountable for what they have done to you and your loved ones and make sure that they cannot continue to get away with their negligent and reckless actions. Reach out to BDIW today to receive a free evaluation of your case.
