Heavy trucks wearing down roads

Pat Stith of The (Raleigh/Durham, N.C.) News & Observer reports on how the state relaxed laws to allow overweight trucks to destroy roads, while the enforcement of heavy trucks has also declined in the past five years. "... [S]tate lawmakers voted 10 times for bills that benefit trucking interests at the public expense." Fines for overweight trucks have dropped by half since the last legislation on the issue in 1981 and "about 100 fewer officers prowled the state's back roads to weigh trucks with portable scales or were available to work at the weigh stations on North Carolina's interstates." The series includes an interactive calculator that calculates how an overweight truck can damage the road.