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Manufacturers obviously have to rate a ladder by placing a weight limit on it, and we shouldn't exceed it because of possible injury. However, in real-world applications, we can't ignore that a human being going up or down a ladder creates a dynamic load on ladder that can far exceed their own weight. It's very possible that a 170-pound man can place a higher peak load on a ladder than a 280-pound man.
Hopefully manufacturers take this variation into account when rating ladders by adding a significant safety factor, but I expect some people will load ladders a lot more than others (given same body weight) possibly exceeding even that.
I'm not in any way suggesting to exceed ladder ratings; but rather provide a possible explanation as to why some things fail when it appears they shouldn't have.
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