Large gigantic trucks, 18-wheelers, tractor-trailers, and other huge vehicles are mainly used to transport heavy cargo or materials from one place to another. Similarly, a large truck is a vehicle that weighs 10,000 pounds or more. Commercial drivers or truck drivers are responsible for the load or cargo during transportation. And there have been incidents of truck loads falling off the truck and causing great chaos and fatal road accidents.
It is the duty of truck drivers to inspect the load and carry only as much weight as the truck can carry, otherwise, the truck could upturn or the cargo could fall on the road. Loading a semi-truck is not an easy task; it requires the drivers or lorry inspectors to see that the weight of the cargo is evenly distributed among the vehicles to ensure maximum safety. Additionally, the trucking regulations require the truck driver to ensure that the load is properly secured to prevent a truck-loading accident on the highway.
Many transport companies and owners try to accommodate extra weight and overload the truck, negating trucking rules, and safety. An overloaded truck is like a time bomb that can blast off during the journey, thus injuring many lives, damaging the roadways and other vehicles. Just as bad is the situation where the load is not properly secured, which can lead to serious accidents.
Truck drivers and transport company owners have a duty to follow the trucking regulations and inspect the loads, failure to do so can put the drivers life at risk. The cargo should be secured according to the tire load regulations.
Loading accidents should not have occurred, as a properly loaded vehicle is much less likely to cause an accident. Unfortunately, as the best truck accident lawyers can attest, loading accidents are all too frequent.
In some instances, a truck driver has been injured during the loading process, which is a separate category of accident from what we are calling loading accidents here. The unfortunate part of a loading accident is that the unsuspecting public has usually no way of knowing the truck driving down the road is unreasonably dangerous.
Greg Baumgartner is a trucking accident attorney in Houston and the founder of the Baumgartner Law Firm, which is based in Houston, Texas, and is dedicated to helping eighteen-wheeler accident victims seek civil justice.
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