using loadavg function in sysinfo.c errors out sometimes

Lines 379 - 383 in sysinfo.c have the following code:

if (sscanf(buf, "%lf %lf %lf", &avg_1, &avg_5, &avg_15) < 3) {
 fputs("bad data in " LOADAVG_FILE "\n", stderr);
 free(savelocale);
 exit(1);
    }

At random, a program will exit when calling this function. If the function succeeds the first time, it will succeed in all other attempts to read /proc/loadavg. The file /proc/loadavg contains 5 numbers so maybe only the first 3 should be read and the rest should just be discarded.