Another call for compulsory caravan training

With RV registrations at a record high and an increased industry focus on unsafe towing, there has been yet another call for a mandatory towing licence or compulsory testing for caravanners...

Emma McLean from The National Transport Research Organisation told ABC News that inexperienced drivers should be required by law to undertake an accredited towing course before hitting the road with a big caravan in tow.

“The skills that people are learning are typically learned on the road, and that’s obviously not the best place for learning how to appropriately drive with your caravan,” McLean said.

“We don’t do that in any other situation, we make them go through appropriate training and appropriate licensing. With learner drivers, we put them through the hard yards with a graduated licensing system,” she said.

She said it was important to “provide support and training”, to not only keep caravanners safe but other road users.

“Any training course, whether it’s mandatory or optional, needs a national accreditation system,” she argued.

“It would also mean not just anybody off the street is able to say ‘I do caravan training’ and potentially be providing people with information that is wrong or isn’t the latest and up-to-date information.”

Ken Wilson, founder of caravan-based safety program Truck Friendly, was quoted as saying that a mandatory training course before towing for the first time would be “ideal” but impractical.

“Mandatory would be ideal but I’m a realist and I know that it’s not going to happen,” he said.

Wilson said it would be a “mammoth effort” to conduct the training courses, which could number in the millions once the 700,000-plus registered caravans along with horse floats, boat trailers, and other towed vehicles are included in the mix.

Speaking on ABC Radio, Luke Chippindale from the Caravan Industry Association of Australia agreed that training and awareness programs around towing safety were “critical”.

However, he said the peak national body doesn’t support mandatory training and licensing “because most drivers on the roads these days, by rights they’re mandated to have a driver’s licence, and that doesn’t always predict good driver behaviours...

Chippindale said the CIAA would prefer governments subsidize driver towing courses to make them more accessible to caravanners who need them.

“We advocate strongly for having the ability to access driver and towing courses because being able to tow a caravan or horse float or what have you requires some knowledge, and many of our travellers on the road have a good depth of knowledge.

“We operate within the assumption that most drivers will operate within the driver behaviours and driver laws that are dictated to us by each state,” he said.

He also said crash data analysis points to around 50 fatalities over the past five years resulting from accidents involving caravans which doesn’t merit an increased focus on towing safety training above other educational measures, like those offered by the Association including tips and training guides for new caravanners.