CARAVAN TURNED OVER

[rossco]

Its quite amazing I find that you don't need a license to tow a caravan or trailer on a car but you do for a truck towing a trailer.
Ok the trailer is not motorised but you need a license for just about anything else on the road.

What I'm getting it what you guys are talking about and thats people just not knowing that they have a trailer on the back and what havoc they can create with one.

A simple test would probably cut out half the accidents with trailers.

Over here the limit is 90 kmh with a limit of 95 kmh and then you get the ticket for speeding.

We had a case of the safety chain not attached went down the road and the trailer jumped off the tow bar, killed a child injured another both walking on the footpath.

The drive didn't know about the safety chain and that it had to be attached to the vehicle.

Went up on a manslaughter charge and ended up in prison.
Certainly got the message out until the next time.

 

[andrewk]

Caravan stability is affected by poor loading, we used to have a caravan long ago, pre-mav days, we loaded as much as possible over the axles and low down, when we got to site we then spent 10 minutes replacing everything in the corrrect place. No big deal, we never used a stabiliser, and we towed a 14 foot caravan with a 1700cc Austin Ambassador, never had a sway even on the motorway.
Stabilisers are often mis-used by placing them on un-stable combinations, with people thinking that this will be safe, how wrong they are.
I would be very concerned if you are having to tighten the stabiliser to make things right.

My worry about stabilisers is that they give many folks an unwarranted belief that they prevent snakes - so they drive faster and hence are less safe rather than more. Frankly, if you feel uncomfortable when towing with a vehicle like a Terrano or other Nissan 4x4 because the outfit feels a bit skittish without a stabiliser then you have a problem to solve - and fitting a stabiliser isn't the solution!!!

You might find this interesting. One significant conclusion is that stabilisers tend to damp small oscillations but not large ones - which is worrying - and that they have little or no effect on the critical speed at which snaking would take place.

See: http://people.bath.ac.uk/en8cjk/Caravan.pdf

Cheers
Andrew

 

[keeny]

test

to what roscco said about test 4 towing, no need to there b no diffference
people past their driving test still cause accidents and still no road sence :evil: :arrow: