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Q If 1 am driving a ychicle with a load of
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absorbent material — such as sand — how can 1 be sure that I will not he breaking the law about maximum weight if I am caught in heavy rain and the load becomes saturated?
AThe legal position is that in Part II of the Road Traffic Act 1972, Section 40(6) provided two defences against a prosecution for _operating a vehicle above its permitted maximum weight. The first is irrelevant to your query unless the vehicle in question could be proved to be on its way to the nearest weighbridge to be weighed.
The second defence provides in part for the situation you have outlined. It states, briefly, that if the maximum permitted weight has not exceeded by more than 5 per cent at the time the vehicle was loaded and since that time no person has made any addition to the load, then the operator can use this as a defence against prosecution.
From this you will see that an operator carrying 20 tons of sand legally can pick up as much as a ton of water by rainfall before he is likely to be prosecuted.