A Flying Snow Missile or Other Debris off a Vehicle Can Kill You
It’s winter time in Pennsylvania and snow missiles and ice can fly off of motor vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed causing serious car accidents and resulting injuries. It is important to help reduce car accidents and protect your assets and prevent accidents from happening by clearing your vehicle of snow and ice. When debris falls or blows off of a vehicle, accidents often occur. Unsecured loads on vehicles and snow missiles account for in excess of 25,000 accidents each year in North America resulting in approximately 80 to 90 fatalities according to the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety. Although your failure to clean your car or secure loose material may be unintentional, not properly securing or clearing your vehicle even when going a short distance can expose you to serious liability.
According to Pennsylvania law, it is against the law to operate a vehicle on the highway if it is improperly covered, constructed, or loaded so that any part of its content or load spills, drops, leaks, blows, shifts, or in any other way escapes or falls off the vehicle. Any vehicle transporting such matters must have the load secured or debris secured to prevent any part of the load or debris from spilling on the highway. Failure to secure materials in your car can result in strong fines going up into the thousands and even result in criminal liability if someone is catastrophically injured or killed. There is nothing more dangerous than a piece of ice flying at a high rate of speed into the windshield of another vehicle.
