Has your caravan ever broken away? What happened?

This happened to a friend of ours when the Chassis broke on their Cruiser Ute. They were towing their BushTracker and I guess luckily were near home and only travelling at about 30 Kmh. It stopped OK at that speed.

Not me but know of a Prado cast towbar head fracturing and the van took off backwards down a slope of a paddock.
The piece that broke off had the chains attached to it as well.
Luckily it wasnt damaged.
Owner fitted an HR type towbar after that.

Toyota later modified the fitting to put the chains in a different place.
Van was too light for a breakaway.

Yep. We owned a ChevronRV Guppy similar to a Avan Weekendr. Nice little van 440kg tare.

The van came out with a single drawbar I think 50x50mm square tube. It broke just under the front of the van at 40kph.

The handbrake cable saved it from full detachment and 6 inch plastic tent pole tubes stopped it being damaged as these hit the ground and took the force.

Insurance covered it however...the van and toolbox was broken into at the yard of the repairer and things stolen like the annex. So another claim and excess was required. It's the owners insurance that covers it not the repairers. take note.

The repairer replaced the drawbar with 75x75 square tube and gussets to the floor frame.

This is the van

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Not a caravan but did have a borrowed loaded trailer go adrift many years ago.
The crummy ball hitch came undone and the even crummier chain broke.
I heard a strange noise, took my foot off the throttle and found the trailer passing me at an angle across the road. Fortunately no traffic coming the other way and the trailer eventually came to a stop amid a shower of sparks from the drawbar. Hooked it back up with a bit of electrical cable applied to the hitch lever and off we went.
Don't know what we would do without some earth wire in the boot.

This one didn't break away! - but I'll wager it wasn't much good, when he finally stopped!! LOL

High-speed Outback camper crash caught on truck dashcam

Cheers, Ron.

I've not had a hitch fail, but our caravan lost a whole wheel near Cocklebiddy in 2014!

The hitch stayed together all right on this one! Bit of a shame they didn't manage to keep it upright!

Caravan and car rollover captured on dash cam

This is a classic rollover caused by wind displacement from the big rig, coupled with a badly loaded 'van.

Notice how the van is being displaced to the right, as it first appears alongside the truck mudguard.
This is the solid air displacement from the front of the truck pushing the van out to the right.
However, once the van gets in front of the truck, the air displacement and side pressure suddenly stops - and the van swings back towards the centre line.

With a properly-balanced van, a car driver would have no trouble correcting the initial sway.
However, because the van is obviously too tail-heavy, the sway only accelerates - and the driver has inadequate van handling skills to counter the sway.

As we can see, the pendulum effect only gets worse - exacerbated by the car driver swinging the wheel at the wrong time - then applying the brakes heavily - and the end result is a foregone conclusion.

During 1975, when I lived on my mine on the Gt Eastern Hwy, about 60kms North of Norseman, I knew of 7 caravan rollovers in that 60km stretch of highway, in a 12 mth period!
They were all identical accidents to the one in the video above - all caused by inexperienced drivers, wind blast from trucks, and badly-loaded caravans.

The highway was an excellent road, even back then - but it was widened again by another couple of metres in the 1980's, to give more passing clearance.

Cheers, Ron.

This is a true story, related to me by a best mate who was travelling from Bunbury to Moree about 1983.
He was halfway across the Nullarbor when he noticed a scrape mark in the bitumen on the LHS, that seemed fairly fresh.
The scrape mark went for 10-15 kilometres - and was still there, when he finally sighted a caravan ahead in the distance. The caravan was only doing about 75kmh.

As my mate got closer, he saw the 'van had a definite tilt to the left. Even more concerning, there was a steady shower of sparks coming from the LH rear axle of the (tandem axle) van!

Upon approaching to within 100 metres, he could see that the LH rear wheel was gone, and the axle was dragging on the bitumen!
The caravan driver was still keeping up a steady pace, though!!

My mate overtook the van (which was being towed by a fairly new 60 series Landcruiser) and pulled up level with the drivers window.
He could see an old bloke at the wheel - a really old bloke! He reckoned he was in his early 80's.

My mate gesticulated and yelled and tried to get through to the old bloke that he should pull up!!
The old bloke took a minute or two to realise this madman alongside him was trying to get him to pull over - so he finally decided to do so!

My mate stopped ahead, got out and walked back and told the old bloke he was missing a wheel!
The old bloke was astounded! He said, "I thought it was pulling a bit heavy! - but I thought it was the headwind!!"

They went back to check the damage, and my mate said it was unbelievable what the old fella had done!

He'd towed the 'van for so long with the left rear wheel missing, that the hub had disintegrated and totally disappeared - the end of the axle had dragged for so long on the bitumen, it had lost about 200mm of length off the end! - and the axle had got so hot (to red heat), it had transferred the heat to the spring leaves, and the spring leaves had sagged with the heat, until they were bent downwards!!

My mate was completely stunned by the damage - and by the fact that the old fella hadn't noticed anything wrong - apart from a bit of extra throttle required!
You'd think he'd at least have seen the shower of sparks! It's a wonder he didn't set the country alight!

It just goes to show that there's an age where people are past their prime, and they really should give up long-distance driving, because they aren't up to the level of concentration required.
It turned out the old bloke was 85 - and my mate was of the opinion he was well past the ability to safely tow a van across the long paddock.

Cheers, Ron.

In summary: Has your caravan ever broken away? What happened?

With this question asked across four forums and one caravanning Facebook page, the reports (mostly first hand with some second hand) have been grouped to the best match scenario of that incident. Incidents involving heavy haulage units have not been included as hitching is different to a caravan or standard trailer.

Unhitched or broken hitch but remained on the chains: 9
These were not breakaways as the trailer remained connected via the chains.

Complete disconnection from tow vehicle:

Towbar broke away, broke, or a frame came away: 6
In these incidents the breakaway attachment point also came away or there was no breakaway.

No chains or breakaway (eg older trailer or incident prior to breakaways being common): 2

Hitch and chains broke, no breakaway: 2

Trailer broke away completely and breakaway activated: 0

We have yet to hear of a caravan breaking free and being pulled up by its breakaway. There were a few reports of breakaways being activated accidentally while driving.

Conclusions

None of the incidents where the breakaway did not activate were caused by any failure of the breakaway battery, only by the breakaway not activating because it was connected to the parts that broke away. This does reinforce the idea that the breakaway cable should be attached to the tow vehicle on the body not the towbar.