A licence to tow?

Here’s a typical scenario, painfully familiar to many new caravanners…

The man retires from a people-managing role in a trade or business workplace and after realising he can’t impose his authority on partner at home without a resulting homicide, they decide to purchase a caravan and tour Australia.

Typically, it will be around 5.5-6.0 metres long and weigh between 2.0 and 2.5 tonnes loaded, often badly.

Unless you’re a current or former tradie, or a recreational four-wheel-driver, it will invariably be hitched to a new tow vehicle, such as a medium-sized Prado or perhaps one of a number of crew cab utes on the market, taking your total GCM or rig weight to somewhere between 4.0 and 5.0 tonnes. 

Then, with virtually no real world experience, you set off with the person you now barely know, to travel up to six or eight hours a day, at speeds up to the legal limit, often on badly-formed roads.

And when the inexperienced long-distance driver get tired and encourages their partner to take over, their rig and lives are entrusted to someone whose driving experience has probably been limited to suburban roads, often in a small front wheel drive hatchback.

Reduced road grip (rain), visibility (fog or darkness) or attention via fatigue or perhaps a domestic dispute over directions, or plans and you multiply the risk factors.

A B-Double blasts past; the vacuum between the two vehicles sucks the van towards the truck; the inexperienced driver panics and over-corrects, has a ‘tank-slapper’ and leaves the road. ??It’s a disaster.

OK, this is a worst case, but still typical scenario. Many couples will embark on such journeys with a background of travelling and living together and sharing driving duties. However with the continuing growth of caravanning as a lifestyle of choice, many won’t.

So isn’t it time to require a towing test and an endorsed licence for everyone towing a caravan weighing, say, 2000kg?

I can imagine the roars of protest from experienced caravanners, but I’ve turned a deaf ear to them, because if you fit the typical inexperienced retiree scenario I’ve described above, you are endangering the life of all road users – including mine!

The idea of endorsed licences for caravanners is not new and has been bandied about for many years. In Victoria, it has several times been put on the table for discussion by the Caravan Industry Association (CIAV) as part of its ‘duty of care’ to caravan purchasers seeking to ‘live the dream’

?However according to CIAV CEO Rob Lucas, who took over this hot potato nearly four years ago, it has had little real support.

?It was not unexpected that experienced caravanners and their clubs would view it as an unnecessary and time-wasting impost, but Lucas said he was surprised that the Victorian Government, through VicRoads were also “cold” on the idea when he broached the subject with them 12 months ago. Yet they still require road users to have an endorsed licence to ride a motorcycle or pilot a heavy truck and will happily take your money.

The issue has gone off the boil for the past 12 or so months following the introduction of Electronic Stability Control systems from Al-Ko and now Dexter that take the ‘wag’ out of caravans created by pool loading, incident avoidance and side winds, but these are band aid measures that only mask the problem that inexperienced drivers in charge of heavy caravan rigs represent.

“They said ‘show us the death statistics that prove that caravanners are a danger to themselves and others’, but this is not the CIAV’s primary role,” said Lucas. “However I’m sure the problem can be quantified by the caravan repair industry and insurers if required.”

There’s a window of opportunity to revisit the subject coming up if the Labor opposition wins back Government in Victoria’s upcoming Sate Election on November 29, as predicted.
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In a surprising promise – given the assertion by Police and Road authorities over the years that driver training only encourages young people to be more aggressive road users – the Victorian ALP has promised free, but compulsory defensive driver training to cut the road toll and improve safety.

?If this happens, it turns the spotlight back on endorsed licences for caravanners and smart insurers and those offering caravan towing training should be planning to get together now.

What do you think? Are untrained and inexperienced caravanners a major menace on our roads?