Thread: Lucky to survive

The golden rule is never pull anything that is heavier than the tug.

Add a bit of inexperience in there,and it’s a great recipe for a disaster.

Whatever did happen no one will know,only those involved.

We recently ran into a guy who has been pulling a 3.4T van around for over 20 yrs,a retired long distance truck driver.He recently bought a D5,and wasn’t happy with the way it pulled the van,went back to the vehicle he had before,which weighed around 500 KG more.

Originally Posted by econti

With no details as to what happened to the van or pics of the road its hard to judge. Could be that the pothole blew a tyre out on the van and that threw it sideways? Heavy van and a not very powerful car, no time to react and floor it to drive it out of the sway?

Personally I think blaming the driver entirely is a bit bull****. The roads in the country are garbage and should be maintained better. Whether it could have been avoided by a better driver or a better tow car is irrelevant.

Ok, I’ll play devil’s advocate here. I’m sure any Polly would be happy to increase road funding to levels where every road was like a well maintained race track - no dramas at all - just convince 80 plus % of the population that all road taxes need to increase around 400%. Petrol - $7 a litre, rego - $3000 per year per car - without patronage or fuel use dropping. Simple.

Now, back to reality - The simple answer why are roads are so crap is because we have a huge area to cover and build/maintain roads on with a tiny population base. Countries with the opposite issue have lovely roads - look at England - you can barely find a dirt road even if you wanted to as every lane and public access road is sealed and well maintained as it’s a tiny country with a large population.

Based on this we all need to understand that our roads simply WILL throw up surprises and that we should be ready for them.

And don’t get me started on people towing caravans with absolutely zero idea of what they are doing and don’t need any training for this. Chuck a 3.5 tonne van behind a 2 tonne vehicle and you can tow it no dramas, no training or special licence. Need to drive a 5 tonne truck - nope, go get a special licence for that - and the truck is far easier, safer and would throw up less surprises that a caravan ever would. I now have a 5 tonne motorhome and MUCH prefer that to towing my old 1600kg van. Heaps easier and far less hassle, but I need a truck licence - go figure.

The we wonder why people get into this sort of trouble…