Under federal law, tractor-trailers traveling on interstate highways and across state borders can weigh up to 80,000 pounds—or 40 tons—across the cab, trailer, and cargo combined. Pennsylvania law imposes similar restrictions on trucks traveling within the Commonwealth. While 40 tons may seem heavy, some commercial truck companies see it as not heavy enough, since they want to get as much cargo as possible on each truck in order to save time and money.
Trucking companies often intentionally break these laws and put dangerously overweight trucks on the road, which sometimes leads to preventable and potentially life-altering crashes. If you’ve been hurt in an overloaded/overweight truck accident in Norristown, getting help quickly from a skilled semi-truck collision attorney is key to getting paid fairly for your damages.
Why Is Overloading a Tractor-Trailer Dangerous?
Like any machine, tractor-trailers are designed with certain weight limits in mind. This isn’t done just for safety reasons, but also as a matter of practicality. No matter how well you design and build a truck, putting enough weight on that truck will eventually cause individual components to bend, flatten, or break entirely, which could cost thousands of dollars to fix or even make the truck as a whole a total loss.
Even if a truck can physically handle carrying an illegal amount of weight, the people driving those trucks will have a harder time braking safely, need more engine power to accelerate from a stop as well as get up slopes, and be more likely to roll over on sharp turns. Any collision an overloaded truck gets into with another car in Norristown will generate even more force because of the excess weight of the truck, and that additional force will cause much more serious injuries for anyone involved in the crash.
How to Prove a Truck Was Illegally Overweight
Because it’s against the law to overload a truck beyond the weight limits set by state and federal law, any trucking company that does so anyway has violated the duty of care they have to act lawfully and responsibly to keep other people on the road safe. Proving that a specific breach of duty like this was the main cause of a wreck can be more complicated than you might think—especially if the truck company knows they were breaking the law.
Unfortunately, companies already acting illegally often won’t think twice about breaking the law again in an attempt to hide their original offense. Important evidence like shipping manifests, driver logs, and data from the truck’s black box recorder may wind up missing or be destroyed intentionally before you can incorporate it into a claim. Overcoming problems like this can be next to impossible without support from experienced legal professionals in Norristown who have experience winning overweight truck crash cases.
Seek Help from a Norristown Attorney with an Overloaded/Overweight Truck Accident Claim
Trucking companies that accidentally or deliberately overload their trucks put their own employees and everyone else on the road at risk of serious harm. If you suffered harm because of this misconduct, you should have grounds to take legal action against the people responsible for your injuries.
A conversation with Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers will give you answers to important questions and confidence about what next steps you should take. Call us today to discuss your options following an overloaded/overweight truck accident in Norristown.
