Thread: Local lad killed by towball

Horrible situation for the families involved.

Now, get ready for the nanny state knee-jerk reaction.

Hi,
The Coroner's report on this is now on the web. Link

A tragic death, and avoidable, had an appreciation of the forces involved in recovery and general principals been observed.

Regards

I take it that a "genuine Toyota" tow bar is in fact a HR bar and that it was rusted inside the tube and that the removable section was poorly made.

How many of us check inside the square tube on our bars for corrosion etc and if we have to replace the tongue how often do we check it all out and just accept it is built right.

While they did have the snatch strap on the tow ball, this accident would have still happened if a proper recovery hitch had been used in the tow bar receiver.

This also highlights the need to use dampers - not necessarily one in the centre but at the ends as well.

Garry

Originally Posted by slug_burner

The flying towball often gets mentioned with snatch strap incident. The really dangerous bit of equipment is the snatch strap.

Too ealy to say but the article from Tasmania talks about the towing assembly and other bits as well as the ball. The one common item here is the snatch strap. Snatch straps need a big warning and perhaps buyers should be licenced to use them.

The towball is rated to 3500 kg as a max towing weight. Including a suitable safety factor on top of the acceleration/deceleration force when the trailer pushes against the towball (reduced with braked trailers) and the ball should be able to handle significantly more. Have a look on the front of 4wds that have lifting eyes on the bullbar. What are they rated to? Are you any better off using them to recover with?

Ill secound that i have seen an ARB bar come off a vehicle bein snatched so realisticly as you said its the snatch strap that is the risk. I can only speculate at the actual load that is put on the recovery point during a snatch recovery and obviously this will change from a sand recovery to a mud recovery.

Everyones usually out of the cars when we do recoveries for a number of reasons,

More hands to help,
Less weight in the vehicles,
And of course so you can hassle the driver of the sunk vehicle.

I feel sorry for the bloke in the front seat who saw the 'tow assembly' come through the windshield n catch his mate in the face...

I am trying to understand that the towing assembly landed 90m behind the vehicle after travelling through the vehicle.
NINETY METRES!!!

From the report:
"...The vehicle rolled and suffered significant damage"
"...the vehicle had sunk into the mud up to its axle and was firmly bogged"

And they still drove it - before it got bogged.

As has been said, highly unlikely that a snatch strap was going to work.
The forces must have been tremendous.
With a "proper" recovery point I assume that the strap would have broken with no steel flying around.

Tragic end.

.

Originally Posted by garrycol

it was rusted inside the tube and that the removable section was poorly made.

Hi,
that is my reading of it i.e.

8<--------------------
The tongue plate has been joined to the RHS hitch by an external fillet weld around all four sides. It was evident water had accumulated at the closed end and caused corrosion. The extent of corrosion was consistent with what would be expected from sea water. Wall thickness had been reduced by corrosion from 4mm to 2.mm along the top of the RHS, 2mm along the sides and 1 mm along the bottom. Average loss of wall thickness would have been greater than 50 percent.
8<-----------------------

It would seem that the goose neck with tow ball (toungue plate) was peeled off the hitch insert and travelled through the recovery vehicle, to be eventually found 90m away.

Now I'm no engineer or physicist, but I imagine that the force required to do that would be impressive.

regards

Originally Posted by austastar

Hi,
that is my reading of it i.e.

8<--------------------
The tongue plate has been joined to the RHS hitch by an external fillet weld around all four sides. It was evident water had accumulated at the closed end and caused corrosion. The extent of corrosion was consistent with what would be expected from sea water. Wall thickness had been reduced by corrosion from 4mm to 2.mm along the top of the RHS, 2mm along the sides and 1 mm along the bottom. Average loss of wall thickness would have been greater than 50 percent.
8<-----------------------

It would seem that the goose neck with tow ball (toungue plate) was peeled off the hitch insert and travelled through the recovery vehicle, to be eventually found 90m away.

Now I'm no engineer or physicist, but I imagine that the force required to do that would be impressive.

regards

Yeah, and having a poxy little recovery drag chute thing would have slowed it down enough to save them..... NOT!!!!

Originally Posted by Hymie

Yeah, and having a poxy little recovery drag chute thing would have slowed it down enough to save them..... NOT!!!!

The point of a damper blanket is that it will dflect some of the energy downward and displace a large % of the remaining energy by hitting or dragging on the ground.
A damper will not have a lot of effect on a projectile and this comes back to incorrect application (use of towballs, hooks without pins etc).
A damper is generally used to stop the strap, chain or cable recoiling.