Overloaded trucks, non-compliance or poor vehicle conditions, driver fatigue and speeding remain main challenges in road freight transport, especially in Low-Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). These issues can cause severe road safety problems, substantial damage to the road infrastructure and environmental impacts. Overloading also leads to unfair competition between transport modes and transport companies. This collection gives an overview of some relevant case studies that either rely on long lasting practice or present new and future opportunities to address problems related to overloading.
The special project report “Overweight vehicles impact on road infrastructure and safety” (PIARC, 2022) pointed out that data collection was difficult in LMIC, and sometime also in developed countries, and that building a better knowledge base for those countries should be of great help.
First, it seemed important to recall the situation and the challenges raised by overloading, with a special focus on the economic reasons of such behavior. Links between imbalanced freight flows in two directions or on different routes, and overloading rate in the most used direction are pointed out.
Second, new approaches, technologies and tools are presented, helping to monitor, and ensuring a better compliance with the current regulations. This goes further than the brief description proposed in the good practice collection published in 2022.