The Role of Trucking Weigh Stations in Highway Safety

If you’ve ever taken a road trip on America’s roads, you’ve seen the signs, even if you weren’t exactly sure what they were: trucking weigh stations. What are these for, and what is even the purpose of having stops for trucks to be weighed?

More Than Weight

In reality, trucking weigh stations do a lot more than just weigh trucks. They often can be full service stations for trucks to get necessary repairs.

Think about it: going through the nation’s highways and towns, there simply aren’t that many places that have the knowledge, expertise, time, or just the parts, to fully inspect and repair and service large semi trucks. But weigh stations do have these resources.

Weigh stations also solve the problem of time; to a trucker, time spent getting a truck inspected and serviced is money lost. But by having these weigh stations, which can, right there on the highway, service trucks, saves time and encourages drivers to stop and get their trucks taken care of so they’re safe.

Checking for Compliance

The employees at weigh stations, which are staffed by government employees and professional truck mechanics, don’t only do servicing and maintenance for trucks–they also check to ensure that the truck is compliant with all federal and state laws.

For example, the weigh station employees might check to make sure the driver is properly licensed, or that the truck’s load is not too heavy, or that it is loaded in a safe manner, or may make sure that the devices checking how long the driver has been driving without a break, are working and properly tracking the driver’s drive time (many of these devices can be altered or doctored by unscrupulous companies).

The inspectors will also check the truck’s height to make sure that it isn’t above the maximum height of any overpasses that it may encounter on state roadways.

Even the actual drivers might be inspected, to make sure that they’re alert, and sober, and to make sure their driving licenses and credentials are current and up to date.

Skipping a Station

Think that a driver might just bypass a weigh station the driver is supposed to stop at? You may notice highway patrol or police at these weigh stations; they can and will follow and turn around, drivers who try to evade stopping for inspection.

There are times when companies can bypass these weigh stations. These usually require approval in advance and usually permissions are only given to drivers or companies with good safety and maintenance records.

Not all weigh stations have all of these amenities. Some are in fact simply weigh stations, where the driver will drive over a weight measuring device. This is normally done to avoid damage to roadways–damage which can cause other cars to get into accidents.

Trucking accident? Call our Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200 if you’ve been in an accident with a semi truck or commercial truck.

Sources:

schneiderjobs.com/blog/what-are-weigh-stations-for

fdot.gov/mcsaw/weighstationlisting.shtm