Scary caravan related incidents, what have you seen ?

Would it be fair to say that you get a bit upset when people don't load there caravans correctly?!

what were they towing it with?

TimBanham, on 07 September 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

An old and worn out Isuzu pick up truck.

my frustration is the group of folk who use their caravans as a cheap holiday during key summer periods and as such have little or no knowledge of towing safely.  They clog the roads with poorly packed, maintained and worn outfits towed by ill matched and dangerous vehicles....the amount we saw on route from cheshire to portsmouth was scary...I think the best was a pretty new but not well looked after elddis firestorm 636 that was laden inside with lots of items - we could see a large gas BBQ and chairs plus a load of bikes.  From a driver view I could see all the way under the 'van and to the jockey wheel....this was a large van, badly packed and very heavy...towed by.......a VW Golf TDI with canoes on the roof !!!

While travelling to Cornwall last month we were amazed by the number of cars pulling caravans and trailers using the outside lane of the M5.

To be fair Nick, my van is old and I too put the kids bikes in it. But then my van has a stamped weight of 750kgs and 85% of the car's max towing weight is 1228kg, so hopefully I'm OK.

If not, I'll try and avoid you next summer!

N1CKTDV6, on 07 September 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Couldn't put it better myself and seen similar.  Just walk up and down a car deck on a ferry in the summer and its scary what you see.  Bikes, portable air conditioning units, domestic fridges,awnigs plus extension plus huge amounts of furniture for said awning and that's what you can see!!!  

I know the police on the M5 had a clampdown one Easter period with weigh bridges for those they thought were overloaded.Good idea. Ive witnessed a few upturned caravans and believe me when they disintigrate they really do.  I saw an upturned van bank holiday Monday on the M6 southbound near stafford. Awful sight.  Also saw the aftermath of a chap rushing for the ferry and lost control on a downward section. straight off the road and through a hedge.  Luckily still upright but with considerable damage.  He was trying to console his screaming young child.  Quite scary...

Totally agree with you Woody.

It is simply not good enough a certain element of caravan owners going around thinking my caravan only weighs 'X' and my car has an 85% figure of 'Y' and so I can throw almost anything into my van.
Each and every van manufactured since time immemorial has a load margin, it is stamped on the caravans i.d. plate and anyone who doesn't respect these guidelines ought to have the book thrown at them with no pussy footing allowed!

I cant believe the length of single axle vans nowadays, Called in to pick some toilet fluid yesterday and ( i think memory crap) it was a Bailey parked at the side of a twin axle looked about a foot longer and only a single axle, it seems to be the norm in the last few years, I just cant see them being as safe,
The worst incident i have ever seen was me! Outside lane of a VERY busy dual carriageway moving with the flow of traffic probably 60 ish, the car in front swerved for no apparent reason  and then i saw something in the carriageway that he had swerved for, I had no time whatsoever or room either side to swerve so i had to go for the middle of my newish Isuzu trooper, It missed the engine and caught somewhere underneath and the noise was just horrific, VERY VERY luckily i kept the outfit straight and slowed VERY gently nearby traffic must have seen what was happening and gave me the room to drift across to the hard shoulder and stop. It turned out to be a 3ton trolley jack !!!! and it was pumped up to the top, It had caught somewhere under the gearbox and was still stuck! Loads of people had stopped to see if we were OK and one kind gent pointed out a breakdown truck making a hasty exit up the road with a locker door swinging, Wittness called the police and they traced the company who had been to a puncture furthar back!he was fined heavilly i believe, We managed to get the jack out from under the car and put it in the caravan, Once under way again i noticed that the gearlever boot had split but thought nothing of it , We finished our two week holl and returned home, I decided to look on my ramp to see if all was OK underneath STUNNED is an understatement the jack had completly smashed the very heavy steel gearbox guard, It had then hit the gearbox crossmember and bent this backwards about six inches, this in turn had pulled the engine clean off both mountings, the exhaust front pipe was bent to shape round the engine block, All in all about a grand in bits to put it right and only me to pay !!! BUT i still say to this day IF IF only the jack had come under the car it would have written the caravan off or who knows what ?? And if it had cleared my van the car behind was a LOT lower than our 4X4 it could have been utter carnage, So after a few weeks ranting and raving i thanked the outcome as prob the best, And for many years if we whent to north wales from Chester MY jack marks were all the way (about a mile) in the tarmac crossing two lanes LOL think they may have gone now. And i have got rid of the underpants!

Coming back from Norfolk the other day, we saw an old Elddis, a fourth berth, swaying about the road.  There must have been everything chucked in the caravan at the back. No regard for safe loading at all.

Makes me sick because when I load my van it is done with great care.  Heavy stuff on the floor in the middle. All jamed in so there is no rolling about. Any item that is too heavy goes in the car.  Since down sizing we have got rid of a lot of stuff so only take what we need now.

Blue Louis, on 07 September 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

Far too many caravanners, not just the once-a-year brigade, have little concept of how meagre the payload allowance is for most caravans.

Back in the "olden" days, before EN1645 and MIRO/MTPLM definitions, it wasn't unknown for the empty weight of caravans lent to magazines for test to actually exceed the maximum gross weight.

A couple of years before I changed my original caravan, I did an "anorak" weight-measuring exercise of everything that was in the caravan - the permanent items alone totalled more than the payload, excluding food, drink and clothes! It was a salutary lesson and I use a detailed spreadsheet now of everything that goes in, but even that has the weakness that it's not updated EVERY time we go away.

From my spreadsheet, I know that I'm using all my apparently generous payload despite religiously draining water heater and taking most food/drink in the car. I'm not a gambling man but I reckon I'd give evens that 90% of caravanners exceed their MTPLM.

Blue Louis, on 07 September 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

....that was probably in decent order when they set out !

Scaryist incident I came across, about 4 years ago went to the dealers for some aqua chem, came away with a senator.

I once had a wheel bounce over me on the M6. We were heading north and a Merc with a big multi-wheel trailer (car transporter thing) was heading in the opposite direction.

Im sure I saw the wheel come off the trailer (but it may be my imagination) but I definitely saw if bounce down the other side of the motorway and it was heading for the central reservation. We stopped as did everyone else, as it appeared to be heading across our side of the motorway but in front of us. It hit the central crash barriers which defelected it towards me. I was crouched down under the steering wheel and everyone else was trying to make themselves as small as possible.

It bounced straight over us and onto the hard shoulder and into a field

The merc and trailer carried on

No word of a lie...............Many a long year ago driving up the M1 from my office in London to my office in Leicester I drove underneath a heavilly laden roof rack that had come off the car 2 in front of me.

fishman, on 07 September 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

Our Adria is-  probably - one of the longest single axle vans available.  When the 642 UP was first launched it was a twin axle then Adria dropped it to a single axle - and it is without doubt one of the most stable vans/trailers I've ever towed.

Agree with Neil, when i had the Fleetwood Sonata (same van as Adria) it was the only 6 berth fixed bed on the market. Bailey brought out the ranger 620-6 with the same layout but on a twin. The Fleetwood was far superior than it's predecessor, a twin axle compass rallye.
Shocks, lower profile tyres, longer A bar and proper weight distribution is the norm for a lot of continental vans.

Some years ago coming back up the M5 just north of the M42, going past a waggon on the inside lane but behind another waggon so my speed set by their speed. We eventually got past and pulled into the inside lane and were in turn passed by the waggon that had been behind us. He pulled in front of us nearly chooping the front bumper of my car off and immediatel stamped hard on his brakes we went from 60mph down to 20mph almost on a sixpence. The waggon in front put his foot to the floor and roared off down the hill at a great rate of knots ( nothing in front of him ), the waggon behind us that I was expecting coming over the top roared past on the in the second lane with his horn blaring. If I could have got hold of the driver of the first lorry I would have killed him on the spot.

Bill Lord, on 08 September 2012 - 03:51 PM, said:

Some of the yob ellement of the trucking world think they own the blessed road and yet oh so often, they are the ones causing the major accidents!!

I personally witnessed this.

In the late 60's I was driving down the M1 on my way to London.

One of our companies representatives was in his Mk II Cortina about 150 yards in front of me, he was about to pass an artic that was carrying lengths of narrowish steel stips that were held down by securing chains.
The truck went over one of the M1's many bumps and all of a sudden some of the chain retention tie-downs broke and part of the load sprung up into the air and quite literally flew everywhere springing around on the ground each time they landed.

Derek (our rep) swerved this way and that before eventually driving over one of the springing strips of steel (approx 50mm x 5mm x 1.5 mtrs) which somehow caught end on under his car, slightly behind where his bum was, it then punctured a hole through the floor and went straight up inside the depth of his driver seat backrest before punching a hole in the roof.

Needless to say when Derek finally brought his car to a standstill he was quite literally sick everywhere as if the strip had entered only 10mm earlier he wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.

If it hadn't been for my witness statement the insurance company would not have believed the claim.

having scraped many a cadaver up off our roads, I can say that even I would've winced at that one if it had happened a split-second earlier Philip....ouch !

percysybil, on 08 September 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

That sounds like a gruesome job Kevin

What do you do?

1,  An unattended / unhitched caravan setting off down a step Derbyshire Hill.  It somehow managed to miss all the other vans and tents on site and ended up in a ditch.

2.  Not seen directly but in the early 80s we were on a site in Spain.  A family - Mum Dad and three teenagers pulled on in a old and soggy Datsun with an even older hand painted van behind.  Strapped to the roof of the car was a 6 man rib and they proceeded to take full patio set kids bikes e.t.c. out of the van, which must have been loaded up to the windows.  The scary part was when he asked me if I knew where he could get a new jockey wheel as he intended to wind it down as he travelled because "The back of the car is sagging and the steering is a bit light.  He further explained that he thought that was what the jockey wheel was for but could he get one with a better tyre."  

3.  The look in Petal's eyes when she sees a new pair of shoes

RogerL, on 07 September 2012 - 05:27 PM, said:

I did a similar thing Roger, when we sold our last 'van, a Knauss "Starclass". As I emptied it I weighed most of the heaviest kit, confident I was well within the loading limit. The 'van turned out to be considerably overloaded, and what was really scary was the amount the 'van had risen on the steadies after being unloaded, requiring several turns of the adjusters to settle it back down...

I also do the the same,somewhere theres a thread of mine from 2010 detailing everything I'd weighed as I loaded up the new 2010 Swift I had at the time, it was an eye-opener for sure and certain items were replaced with lighter versions!