Not only does aggressive driving, drowsy driving, driving under the influence, and other negligent actions taken by truck drivers lead to South Florida truck accidents, but cargo load issues have also caused safety hazards for Florida motorists sharing the road with these large rigs.
Every year there are hundreds of innocent victims of Florida truck crashes who experience a serious injury or a family loses a loved one due to a tragic truck accident. Sometimes, these accidents are caused by improperly loaded trucks, overloaded trucks, trucks with unbalanced loads, unsecured loads, and sliding loads.
Regulations from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration allow a truck to weigh up to 80,000 pounds and require a tractor trailer’s cargo to be evenly distributed, balanced and secured. These regulations are in place to keep a truck’s load secured and under a certain weight limit, so that accidents do not occur because of a shifting load or too heavy of a load. However, because of the ever increasing demands placed on truckers, many truck drivers load more cargo onto their trucks than what is safe and allowable, plus they rush to load it.
The cargo should be:
- Loaded properly
- Evenly distributed
- Secured
- Balanced over multiple wheel axles
- Under the weight limit
When a truck accident in South Florida occurs due to a violation of any one of the above mentioned reasons, truckers and their trucking companies may be liable for injuries that result.
In order to ensure that the cargo doesn’t pose a danger to a truck driver and other motorists on the road, a trucker should check his rig before each trip and perform regular inspections. The truck driver should know how much his cargo weighs, how to properly load cargo, and how to limit the shifting of the cargo being transported.
When a truck driver fails to perform an inspection of the cargo, he can be held liable for the injuries that may result to the occupants in the passenger vehicles. Failure to comply with these rules can cause a heavy load to become loose, spill cargo, or the load shifts that cause a truck to jackknife.
When a car is involved in a South Florida truck crash, victims often sustain serious injuries, such as broken bones, head injuries, back and neck injuries, paralysis, and even death. If you were injured in a Fort Lauderdale truck accident, you may have a personal injury claim against the truck driver and trucking company. Contact an experienced trucking accident attorney in South Florida today at the Law Offices of David Benenfeld at (954) 677-0155, and receive a free legal consultation about your case today.
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