What are the dangers associated with driving an overloaded truck?

Throughout Illinois, you’ll find many large trucks transporting goods. It can feel dangerous to drive near these large vehicles. Unfortunately, it’s even more dangerous when these large trucks get overloaded. Here are a few of the dangers associated with overloaded trucks.

Difficult to drive

When someone is driving an overloaded vehicle, it can provide a slight improvement in overall traction. However, there are far more dangers of driving an overloaded truck. When trucks get overloaded, it’s harder for drivers to control this vehicle’s front-end steering. It’s also easy to misjudge stopping distances in overloaded trucks.

Wearing down trucks faster than normal

Overloaded trucks wear down much faster than those transporting lighter loads. Over time, continuing to send overloaded trucks on the road can rack up a lot of maintenance expenses. This situation also costs trucking companies money because trucks getting repaired can’t be on the road delivering goods.

Violating regulations

It’s important to note that overloaded trucks can cause a lot of regulation violations. The exact fees that a trucking company pays for depends on how overloaded they are and what state the violation occurred in. In certain situations, a trucking business can face criminal charges for sending out overloaded trucks.

Legal liabilities

Some trucking companies send overloaded trucks on the road on purpose to make larger deliveries. However, this decision can also come with increased liability if one of these trucks gets in an accident. Motor vehicle accidents involving semi-trucks are already more likely to lead to fatalities, so there are serious legal consequences for negligent companies.

There are multiple dangers of having overloaded trucks on the road. Not only are these trucks costly from a business standpoint, but they can be dangerous to truck drivers and everyone else on the road.