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Automotive News & Views Utility Trailers are Dangerous
9 messages, Last post on May 20, 2008 at 10:39 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Editor Karl had a great blog up the other day about the rate of carnage from trailer "accidents." The LA Times story linked in his blog says "Runaway trailers are a little-known but persistent cause of devastating crashes, deaths and injuries across the country." Please check out the blog and the comments: Towing the Line on Trailer Training |
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The rig is to stay out of the Inside lane because the speed limit for towing is 60. 40' motor homes dragging a vehicle behind are famous for ignoring the speed limit and drive like cowboys in the forbiddened lane. U Haul trailers bounce from side to side while chasing their pickup towers. Fishermen & water skiers don't seem to care either. They exceed the limit and lane direction and never get picked up. When a single axle trailer is in view, you can assume it doesn't have brakes on it. Then the driver learns a new definition of the term "Jack Knife".
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Replying to: euphonium (Dec 27, 2007 2:51 pm)
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Replying to: fintail (Dec 27, 2007 3:01 pm) I always give trailers a wide berth. Look at them in parking lots sometimes too - lots of times they don't even have safety chains, much less have them connected.
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To all who read this: Please, Please, Please go to see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-lfdRVMLTQ and here is my story as published in the United Kingdom: Trailer smash alerts USA safety lobbyist THIS week's Dorset Echo story about a trailer full of cows toppling over near Dorchester drew a response from the other side of the Atlantic. The rogue cattle box came away from a Land Rover and overturned on the A352 at Winterbourne Abbas, leaving the four Friesians trapped and the road blocked. The story struck a chord with a trailer safety activist in America. Ron Melancon, who has been tracking trailer-related crashes across the globe for nearly five years, felt compelled to contact the Dorset Echo from his home in Glen Allen, Virginia, in the USA to share his carefully compiled tales of trailer woe. Ron was driving home from the library in his van with his son back in May 2003 when he crashed into a trailer being pulled by a pickup truck in front of him. He says he didn't pick up just how close he was because the trailer was so low-slung and see-through. Instead of simply accepting a ticket for hitting the empty trailer Ron fought the fine and began a campaign fighting for safety improvements to trailers. Since then he has been keeping track of trailer-related accidents across the USA, United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. Ron picked up on the A352 incident on the Dorset Echo website and got in touch straight away via email. Ron's Dangerous Trailers website features his manifesto, news articles on his campaign and a gallery of offending trailers. More chillingly it also offers a list of people killed in trailer smashes. Ron also maintains an Internet blog called Dangerous Trailers in the United Kingdom, which he uses to collate news reports of trailer accidents this side of the Atlantic. He has taken his fight to the Congress of the United States in an effort to get the Virginia law regarding vehicle trailers changed. Ron, who also tracks incidents involving floats in parades and carnivals, believes more rigorous oversight and education is urgently needed. "I don't think people intentionally want to hurt other people," he said. "But how many people need to pass away before something is done?" No motorists - or cows - were hurt in the crash on the A352, a busy and sometimes dangerous stretch of road, but firefighters and farm workers had to cut the animals free. * Ron Melancon's website can be found at www.dangeroustrailers.com. You can read the United Kingdom blog at http://dangeroustrailersin theunitedkindom.blogspot.com/. 10:04am Friday 21st December 2007
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Glen Allen man seeks federal trailer rules Safety quest continues up ladder four years after collision with dark trailer Tuesday, Dec 25, 2007 - 12:08 AM By JUAN ANTONIO LIZAMA TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Sometimes Ron Melancon thinks about giving up his four-year fight for safer trailers on the road. Melancon, a 42-year-old manager at Macy's in Regency Square mall in Henrico County, successfully lobbied the General Assembly in 2004 to require trailers of less than 3,000 pounds to have two or more reflectors or 100 or more square inches of solid reflective material in the rear. He says the trailers are unsafe because without reflectors, drivers can't see them at night. They can also come loose and cause wrecks. "When I want to give up, I always go back and say, 'Ron, you always fought back,'" he said. "So, how callous of me would it be if I chose to stop and something happens to my family? How hypocritical would that be?" Melancon now wants the federal government to set national standards, which currently vary by state. He also wants the government to require a class on safe towing for trailer owners and inspection for trailers less than 3,000 pounds, and to set standards for homemade trailers. "A trailer in Virginia should be a trailer in New York and a trailer in Massachusetts," he said. Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, added some amendments to tighten the legislation passed by the assembly. He said the federal government should be doing an investigation and collecting data on trailers coming loose and causing wrecks. "I've not seen anybody come up with the technical changes that would be needed to change or require change in those trailers' hitches," Watkins said. "I'm not sure whether they are being improperly hitched to the towing vehicle, or whether the flaw is in the engineering or the design of hitches." It would be difficult to enforce state restrictions, or mandate a safety course or inspections, because trailers are universal, Watkins added. "I think [Ron] is a man with a cause," he said. "It is obviously important to him, and it should be important to anybody." Melancon, who lives in Glen Allen with his wife, Dawn, and children, Zachary, 8, and Megan, 3, began his battle on trailer safety after he hit the rear of a trailer with his minivan at night in 2003. "I was paying attention," he said. "I wasn't on the cell phone. I was looking ahead of me. I saw this truck, but I didn't see the trailer." Melancon contested the following-too-closely charge that resulted from the collision, and a Henrico County judge dismissed it. Since then, he has spent thousands of dollars and countless hours -- sometimes until early morning -- maintaining a Web site on trailer crashes and disseminating information about trailer hazards to public officials, newspaper editorial pages and anyone else who will listen. . . . In Virginia, trailers weighing more than 3,000 pounds are required by state law to have brakes and to be inspected, but those weighing less are not. The Virginia Crash Investigation Team, based at Virginia Commonwealth University, issued a detailed report last year of a trailer that came loose and killed a driver in 2003 in Virginia and urged training for law enforcement to identify violations on trailers. It also advised the Department of Motor Vehicles, state police and members of the General Assembly to review the current administrative code. State troopers get some training in identifying obvious violations and hazards. A specialized unit also assists troopers in accidents involving trailers. "However, the Virginia code is silent as to any design or construction specifications for these vehicles or for towing chains and hitches," the report states. Worn tires and lights that don't work are common problems on trailers, said Trooper A.J. Puckett with the Crash Investigation Team. "There are a lot of problems with them." Statistics on the number of accidents and deaths specifically caused by trailers are not collected. But in 2004, the most current year for which statistics are available, there were more than 65,000 crashes in the nation involving passenger vehicles towing trailers, which resulted in 358 deaths and 17,617 injuries, according to the National Highway Safety Administration. The number of accidents, injuries and trailer-related incidents resulting in property damage increased by 20 percent from the previous year. Melancon gathers news reports from across the country about trailers coming loose and causing fatalities. Manufacturers recall food, vehicles and tires when they cause deaths, he said. "Excuse me: 400 people are killed a year due to a manufactured product that comes unhitched, runs along the highway and kills people," he said. "How many more people have to die for you to do something?" John Slavnik, who has been a salesman at Trailer World in Gloucester Point since it opened 10 years ago, said visibility at night is a big issue for trailers. They should have reflectors on the side too, in case a back light is burned out, he said. "The more reflectors they have, the better," Slavnik said. Dawn Melancon has mixed feelings about her husband's cause. It takes a lot of his personal time, she said. "It's a good thing if it makes a change or saves somebody's life," she said. "But a lot of times he keeps going and going, and you say, 'Oh my gosh, is he going to get anywhere?'" Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or jlizama  timesdispatch.com. Go Back |
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Go to the web site and look at the video.......... a man had to get his leg amputated. For what?? These manufactures on purpose make them just under 3,000 pounds to avoid any oversight. What is going on?? Then they will state they are using FMVSS108.. The problem is it has not been updated since 1969. Can I build a car today using 1969 standards? Then they spent almost 10,000 thousand dollars to undo my reflector tape law in Virginia.... I won again... go here to see>>>> http://www.dangeroustrailers.com/FreePage29.htm An out of control trailer slammed into a bus stop Thursday morning, hitting three people. All are hospitalized -- one with life threatening injuries. Bus stops are really sturdy but it had to be removed after this accident. A trailer behind a truck somehow came loose, jumped the curb and slammed into the bus stop. At least three people were waiting for the bus there. The driver stopped his truck on a side street and ran back to the bus stop where his trailer had stopped. There, all three people were hurt, one with severe life threatening injuries to the leg. A friend of the driver told Eyewitness News that the driver, identified as Cedric Banks, actually knew one of the people who was hit. "It was a freak accident. The trailer came loose, hit some people at the bus stop. He is a very nice guy, he knows a lot of the people -- one of them that was involved in it was someone he knew. It makes it even worse," said Samuel Toney, the driver's friend. Police didn't take the driver into custody, but they said he will be cited for a myriad of charges including unsafe towing. The driver wouldn't talk on-camera but he did tell Eyewitness News he wouldn't want this to happen to anyone. http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=7547675&nav=168Y |
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 27, 2007 11:10 pm) Speaking of trailers, it is always fun to see a clapped-out old travel trailer wagging like a dog's tail as some halfwit tows it at high speed. Gotta love the lowet common denominator mentality on the roads. |
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Replying to: ronmelancon (Dec 28, 2007 5:06 am) |
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