This driver towing a boat made a poor decision resulting in the loss of his boat

Use multiple straps to secure boat to the trailer @ bow, mid ship, stern. Disassemble canvas canopy prior to travel. Observe safety operational limits. Don’t take chances. Vessel fulcrum balance slightly forward of trailer axis, the load is mostly pressing down on the hitch.

3 Likes

Laws are all over the place. In California the speed limit when towing is 55mph. In Texas it’s 70mph for a small trailer (less than 26ft), 60mph for others - but that means there’s at least one place where it’s legal to do 69mph while towing.

I don’t think there’s any place where legal limit is above 75 even if you’re not towing (maybe Montana?) - but everyone treats the legal limit as 10mph slower than what you should be going in good weather anyhow (if you’re not towing!) because that’s how they usually mark them.

3 Likes

Utah driving through next to the salt flats the speed limit is 80 if I remember correctly. Drove through there on a cross country trip after getting 4 new tires and an alignment. And it was flat, straight and smooth sailing. Was not towing.

1 Like

Texas also has had at least one highway death a day for 19 years straight and counting.

Texas has a stretch of toll road outside of Austin that is 85 mph. See above statement.

3 Likes

Yeah, I suspected as much but the imagery helps. Being yanked around by a tail with a mind of its sounds…suboptimal.

2 Likes

Does this somehow involve Penis Fish?

3 Likes

No speed limits apply to towing in my jurisdiction (except for towing farm implements, which cannot exceed 30mph.)

The freeways here have a posted max of 70mph.

1 Like

Australia is just loaded with idiots in overpowered cars. The suburban street I live on is a favorite with people like that. All night they step on the power to see how fast they can go off the little hill I live on, only to get booked by the police who hang out at the bottom of the hill.

5 Likes

Incidentally, road trains:

…tend to behave like this as well.

A small steering input at the tractor is magnified by the following trailer, then magnified again, and again, and again…

By the time you get to the last trailer, it is not uncommon for it to be sliding sideways across both lanes. It’s best not to meet them on corners, passing or approaching.

8 Likes

I suppose it would since at that point you’re effectively driving 40 ton bullwhip

2 Likes

is there a band on board

Negative on this.
This accident happened not far from me.
The mudflaps you linked are just the makers of the trailer. Nothing more.
However, this doesn’t mean he was new or old at driving. It just meant that he pushed the trailer beyond the capability of the trailer. (Trailers like this tend to be speed rated. Looks like he exceeded that speed).
This road is notorious for accidents. There are next to no passing lanes for many many km’s at a time (miles at a time for those that prefer to use archaic measurements). It’s also got a lot of holiday goers on it. This is the path from a major city to the nearest beach. (About 2 hr drive).
This means you get lots of people driving along this road. (Kings Highway if you wanna look it up).
You also get a lot of impatient dickheads. Quiet a few of them end up as statistics.
In this case, noone died. Ego got destroyed. But no human death.

4 Likes

I’ve had that sort of situation when a car towing a caravan started to snake coming towards me one morning on a fairly narrow two-lane road! That was a situation with a very high sphincter factor on my part - I was trying to judge where the swings would go and avoid taking my car out, but it swung back just in time.
The adrenaline rush took a lot longer than the actual incident to disappear.

3 Likes

You’ll never win the trailer race with that attitude.

6 Likes

What’s one more race I won’t win?

3 Likes

Not anymore.

Duct tape: It has a light side and a dark side; it binds the galaxy together.

3 Likes

That wasn’t my point at all, and I don’t think that wake vortex (at these speeds, anyway) would have this much effect.
I was just making a silly joke about boating inside a marina - there’s generally no specific speed limit, but there are signs all over saying “No Wake” - i.e. go slow enough in the marina that you don’t make waves. This gentleman obviously failed to observe those signs.

Short Title: Gentleman Losses Boat

1 Like

Even if keeping a safe distance, I go out of my way to not drive behind anything being towed or carried in an open transport. (A near-tragic, childhood occurrence fuels that decision.) That aside…

… some years back, a co-worker told me of seeing a pressurized gas cylinder drop off the back of a truck on the freeway. He had been driving immediately behind the truck on the far right lane. When the cylinder hit the road, its stop valve and gauge were sheared right off and the cylinder became a rocket. Luckily, the ‘bottle-rocket’ fit neatly into the curb running along the right side, sort of like a train on rails. The cylinder – accelerating – rocketed along (all that pneumatic energy nowhere near depleted) and sped past the truck that had been carrying it. You read that right. So… you’re the truck driver. You have no idea that you’ve lost a cylinder. And you see a cylinder speeding along and passing you on the right. Think about it.

6 Likes