An ongoing problem is vehicles driving with unsecured loads. This could be a dump truck with gravel sifting out the back. This could be someone moving and they’ve overfilled the back of their truck with furniture stacked on top of other furniture. This could be where you have construction workers or landscapers with trailers.
And the trailer has building materials, building supplies, loose material, debris falling off of construction equipment, et cetera. These can all lead to hazards. And especially when the driving occurs on the highway, because of course we have the higher speeds. So even something like a pebble falling out the back of a dump truck can become troublesome because that pebble now is hitting a car that is.
Let’s say going 70 miles per hour. So then you have a cracked windshield and then you have a loss of time and money while you try to sort out that cracked windshield and many times the driver won’t be able to because they can’t prove fault on the part of the driver unless they dashcam. But of course then we’re getting into a separate problem.
where we’re really making this the putting the onus on the driver when it was not their fault at all. It was the fault of the vehicle with the unsecured load. And of course, that’s just on the, on the good side. On the bad side, we could have extremely dangerous situations where people die. Because of road debris, because of objects falling off and or we could have significant injuries and major crashes.
So we need to see the same type of enforcement and scrutiny from police officers with unsecured loads as we do with potential speeding violations. Because this is a real problem and it affects the whole population. Anybody that’s driving on the highway. Could be potentially in danger or just casually lose a thousand dollars and several hours of their life having to deal with the, the fallout from falling debris in Texas.
This is an offense of, of not less than 25 and no more than 500. So we also need to see that go up. There needs, there needs to be much higher fines, much more, much more strict fines against vehicles with unsecured loads. And then of course there can be liability for damages and there could even be criminal charges that result from this, but of course, that’s all contingent on us being able to prove.
That the object or debris fell from a vehicle, and that can be extremely difficult, especially when that car is going, that vehicle is going to be in front of you, and then you might be dealing with the fallout and not trying to prove liability, but simply trying to avoid. Being in a crash or potentially ending up in a crash and having to deal with that, you may not be able to follow that vehicle.
It can be extremely difficult. So we really need to see the police apply scrutiny here and start pulling over trucks with loads or trucks with items falling out because that should be, there’s, there is no place for that on the highway. And yet this is commonplace. So I do see police that commonly pull over drivers for, for potential speeding violations, but this is not something I noticed.
And, and, and anecdotally I have followed cars not on purpose, but I’ve just been behind them on the highway for long, long stretches. And seen nothing happen with, let’s say, trucks that have furniture stacked way over the truck’s capacity. Or you have these different construction vehicles where there is dirt falling out, where there are rocks falling out, debris falling out, and nothing is being done with them.
But they can create a lot of problems, so this is something that needs to be addressed.