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Ken Kurowoski thought his car had been shot.
“My windshield was hit by a stone, and my wife and I thought someone shot us with a bullet,” he said. “The sound was so loud.”
The stone had fallen from a dump truck, and, since then, he’s wondered if dump trucks and other truck drivers can avoid liability when their trucks have signs warning drivers to “Stay back 200 feet” or that they’re “not responsible for broken windshields.”
“I had this crazy idea that if the truck‘s sign, ’Stay back 200’ etc., is a legal procedure for truck drivers to escape damage payments, why couldn’t I put a similar sign on all 4 sides of my car,” he asked The News & Observer. “Just imagine if everyone had those signs on their cars, we wouldn’t have enough roads to hold all the cars, all separated by 200 (feet).”
Here’s what you need to know about the signs frequenting the backs of trucks on North Carolina roads.
Are ‘stay back 200 feet’ signs legal in NC?
In short, no, the signs don’t provide blanket immunity.
“They’re not legal,” said John McCabe, a Cary-based personal injury attorney. “And this is a pet peeve of mine, and has been something that’s just always got my irritation. You can’t go around, put a sign up to exculpate yourself from liability.”
State law requires vehicles carrying rock, gravel, stone or another “load” to prevent the load from “falling, dropping, sifting, leaking or otherwise escaping therefrom.”
“Those fraudulent signs that they put up there trick people in to thinking ‘I have no legal recourse’ when in fact they do,” McCabe said. “Now, part of what makes these cases tricky is, you have to prove that the rock or whatever it was that broke your windshield or whatever actually fell out of the truck because it was not secured.”
That means being able to identify the truck, the license plate, the company and a description of the driver, he said, adding a dash camera can help easily get proof.
The company is not responsible if a truck kicks up a rock that is already on the ground, McCabe said.
“You can’t put a bumper sticker on your car saying ‘not responsible for distracted driving’ or ‘not responsible for running a red light,’” McCabe said. “Those things are fraudulent.”
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