How to avoid a caravan crash

There are literally dozens of long-distance driving and towing tips that can help make any journey safer and less stressful, but here are 10 that focus specifically on driver behaviour and thought patterns while actually sitting behind the wheel in traffic -- beyond that well-worn safety message; if you (insert stupid activity here) and drive, you're a bloody idiot...

Be prepared

Before departure it’s important that the vehicle and caravan or camper trailer are in optimum condition. That way you’ve done everything possible to avoid problems en-route.

Try to avoid time pressures by having some ‘fat’ incorporated in your schedule. Allowing more time for scheduled and unscheduled stop-offs means that you don’t have to drive with ‘pedal to the metal’ to get to your campsite before dark...

Read the road

Reading the road is vital and this ‘reading’ takes into account not only the road but also the vehicle you’re driving.

How fast you can travel on good surfaces is usually down to factors other than road quality. A five tonne towing rig handles differently from an unladen single vehicle and speed should be trimmed to suit. Braking distances are drastically different and that’s another reason for slowing down.

Also read: Top-5 towing myths

Vision is critical for safe cruising, yet it’s surprising how few drivers slow down at night time or when the road is wet. Night driving in the country is fraught with danger and dusk is even worse.

Control fatigue

Fatigue is a killer on our roads. The authorities blame speed for being the number one killer, but fatigue or lack of driver attention is at least as significant. The best driver in the world isn’t much use in an emergency if he or she is nodding off behind the wheel.

Taken together, 84 per cent of the events triggering accidents are attributable to the driver, says Mercedes-Benz.

Accident statistics accumulated by the company prove that 45 per cent of all accidents could have been avoided if the drivers involved noted the critical events prior to the accident, then acted without distraction and with correct driving technique.

Ensuring driver attention is best done by regular rest breaks --- every two hours is a good rule of thumb.

One aspect of fatigue that doesn’t seem to get much focus in road safety campaigns is dehydration. Sitting in a heated or air-conditioned vehicle is a recipe for fluid loss, but because there’s no physical exertion involved it’s easy to miss the onset of dehydration.

Also read: How to avoid a roll-over

Water is the best cure and coffee and sweet, fizzy drinks are the worst. It’s essential to carry plenty of easily-accessible water inside your vehicle.

Ignore bullies

In the misguided belief that sitting right on a car’s or caravan’s rear bumper will somehow make the terrified driver speed up, many pushy truckies risk making the headlines for becoming yet another heavy vehicle driver to kill an innocent family in a massive rear ender.

For amusement and to ward off the inevitable boredom of driving the same vehicle over the same roads, day after day, week after week, month after month, ‘rounding up’ another truck is a principal diversion. Heavy vehicles two abreast for kilometres, holding up car traffic, is now the normal way for many drivers to behave.

Adding further spice is a CB stream of profane, insulting invective about almost everyone outside that cosy cabin. No wonder car drivers with families on board don’t monitor Channel 40.

Also read: Don't squeeze truckies out!

Some of today’s drivers are the very opposite of the legendary ‘truckie’. Recently, I pulled up at a diesel pump to fill my ute tank and a B-Double pulled in behind me. As I began walking to the pay station the driver yelled at me: “Get off the f…in’ pump ya prick, so I can move up.”

I directed his gaze to the sign that explicitly forbade my doing so before paying, but he continued to berate me as I walked to the office.

The two-second gap

An important contributor to safe driving is leaving sufficient space between your rig and the vehicle in front. If you’re right on its bumper, you’re not leaving sufficient space to allow for any sudden momentum changes.

Also read: Why you should tow faster

What if the vehicle has braked suddenly for a bounding ‘roo? You’re into its rump and you’re the one who’ll cop the negligent driving charge, not the other driver.

Dropping back and leaving at least a two-second gap may open the way for lunatics to cut in, but that’s the occasional price you’ll have to pay for much more relaxed driving.

Picture a successful trip

We’re told that if you ‘see’ yourself in a future situation – on top of the dais at an Olympic medal presentation, perhaps?! – then you can plan how to get there.

Likewise, if you can ‘see’ yourself sitting around the campsite with your family and friends after a long drive, that vision can be constructive while you’re planning and doing the journey.

Slow down

Mercedes-Benz runs a training course for European truck drivers that shows participants about 85 per cent of driving environment information is perceived through the eyes and that their field of view is a generous 180 degrees. But the region of focussed vision is a narrow 10 degrees at most.

Outside that focussed region we’re more likely to notice movement than colour. That’s why drivers are encouraged to move their eyes constantly.

The entire field of forward vision can be broken up into these 10-degree ‘concentration circles’ – usually about eight of them in a typical driving situation at low speeds. As road speed increases the brain can’t process the incoming information as quickly as it can at low speeds, so the effective size of the circles decreases while the number of circles increases about nine times.

Even within the focussed region the eyes can miss vital information – for instance an amber traffic light can be ‘invisible’ if it blends into background colour, or the brake lights on a car can be disregarded by eyes that have turned their focussed region to look at a driver in the back of a parked van.

Eye direction needs to be lower when city driving than when in the country, because hazards are more numerous around town and closer, thanks to lower road speed and higher traffic density.

Look where you want to go

Try this experiment: walk along a crowded street against the flow and avoid walking into people. Tricky isn’t it? Many times, when you make eye contact with an oncoming pedestrian, you both finish up wrong-footing each other.

Just as when you focus on the eyes of an oncoming pedestrian, if you concentrate your eyes on something when driving, then that is where your vehicle is most likely to go. If you stare at an obstacle, your vehicle will seem to be ‘drawn’ to it.

Also read: Why you shouldn't overtake when towing

The correct procedure is to note the obstacle you want to avoid, then concentrate on the safe course. Your peripheral vision will track the obstacle, but you’ll avoid it.

If you’ve done an advanced driving course, you’ll have been told about spotting the apex of bends, as an aid to smoother, quicker cornering. You select the apex as you approach the corner, then it’s time to concentrate on the exit. If you stare at the apex, when you arrive at it, you have no exit focus.

It’s easy to spot drivers who have no experience of looking where they want to go because their cornering process is a series of separate events – particularly in tight corners. They usually work out too late that it’s a corner, so their approach speed is too high and they’re in the wrong gear. They brake too hard, change gear while momentum is being lost, steer too wide, then oversteer and have to wind off some lock.

Anticipation is important

Our judgment of speeds and distances is generally slightly wrong, according to Mercedes-Benz’s research. We tend to underestimate our speed and overestimate the distance we are from an object. That can be a deadly combination, particularly when fatigue and speed-acclimatisation are dialled in.

Anticipation properly starts before beginning any trip – even a short week-end run. Drivers need to think about the likely road conditions and the state of the vehicle and its load. Extra care is needed if the roads are wet, or heavily trafficked, or if the tow vehicle or caravan is loaded differently from normal.

However, perception of future problems can sometimes interrupt reaction to more urgent situations: a driver concentrating on a narrow bridge in the middle distance can fail to ‘see’ a stop sign immediately ahead; or, if concentrating on a red light a kilometre ahead, may drive through one that’s much closer.

Handling intersections

The best way to motor smoothly in traffic is to judge traffic flow and blend in. There’s no skill in rushing up to a red light and braking heavily, but there is skill in trimming speed early and judging the right approach speed and gear so that you are still moving when the light turns green.

Traffic lights should always be approached with the idea that a red light is a potential green one, but more importantly, a green one is a potential red one. If you’re looking sufficiently far ahead – and a big SUV or 4WD ute often allows you to do that quite effectively in heavy traffic – then you’ll know how long the light has been illuminated.

Traffic light sequences have been worked out so that a vehicle can stop safely within the amber light period, but that calculation is blown out the window if you’re 20km/h above the speed limit when you spot the change to orange. Try getting off a red light camera charge by saying that the amber light didn’t last long enough!

You can ‘read’ intersections and roundabouts. When approaching a roundabout, for example, it’s best to reduce speed before the intersection to the speed you estimate you’ll be able to use through the intersection.

After you’ve cut speed to that level, select the gear you can use through the intersection.
By approaching a roundabout in this manner you’ll need only to steer and look as you drive through, instead of braking, gear changing and steering with one hand.