Caravan weights and safety - do you know all about yours?

Great, I'm all for the authorities checking rigs. We've all seen the danger of out of control caravans.

I'm also eager to see marked police vehicles more common on our roads policing the fools that are also a danger with their lack of care. How are they educating them? Some compulsory defensive driving courses in place of a fine? In 1974 at 18yo I was forced by the RAAF to attend such a course due to my hoonish driving and it shook me up for the benefit of many.

Anyway those police on the ground and emergency services do a great job overall, especially this time of the year when they'd prefer to be at home enjoying their family.

It does not seem right to me that someone with a car licence can tow a caravan with no endorsement on their licence particularly if they had never towed anything as long and heavy as a medium sized van before. I guess with all the vans on the road (many thousands) at anyone time, we are getting away with it, but there are accidents due to driver inexperience which may have been avoided if that driver was better trained. I personally believe all caravaners should be required to obtain an endorsement on their car licence before towing a caravan.
The police check is a very good step in the right direction and more should be set up nationally. I have been towing a van now for 3 years, in all states and have never been checked while on the road.

It would be interesting to know what is considered a safe speed for towing a big caravan fitted with an archaic braking system. Certainly the majority of caravan brakes aren't up to the same standard as modern vehicles & the chances of avoiding a collision in an emergency stop at highway speeds would be pretty slim.

We have a summary this very successful two day event:

Firstly, keep in mind this is just a snap shot in time. Any figures I give should not be taken as scientifically analysed in anyway. Just raw data collected from those that were weighed or spoken to over the two days.

Next, the actual going out and weighing of vans was carried out to try and alter the perception (well founded) that police do not target caravans for compliance. That perception was to be altered by allowing various members of social media forums, Facebook groups, written magazines, radio and so on to witness the activity first hand and report on it. The object being to spread the word as far as possible that the chances of being weighed have now increased. This was then going to drive conversations and discussion across social media to encourage more caravan users to think about their situation and start to make some changes. Hopefully, they themselves would then help and encourage new entrants into the market to consider weights and safety BEFORE buying their van, not after and realising they had stuffed up!

There is so much anecdotal evidence on the internet about all these big overweight vans tracking up and down the highways. I wanted to test that evidence and get some real facts. I also wanted to get an idea of how much your average caravanner knows and understands about ratings and weights

The operation was setup to coincide with a very busy period of traffic passing through the East Gippsland town of Newmerella near Orbost. Caravans were to be brought in at random to be inspected and weighed. Some did come down voluntarily after hearing about it on social media.

What happened?

Of the 80 plus caravans that passed through the site, 71 caravans were weighed. Only 1 motorhome surprisingly.

All were asked several questions

1. Do you actually know what your ratings are?
2. Have you ever weighed your rig?
3. Do you know what you weigh right now?
3. Can you provide an estimate of what you think you weigh right now?
4. Do you know where your compliance plate is?

Only 2 drivers knew all their ratings
Only 3 drivers had ever weighed their rigs
Only 3 drivers knew what they weighed at that moment.
ALL (except the 3 above) underestimated their weights as at that moment.
All knew where the compliance plate was. Two didn’t have one attached.

Caravans were then weighed by my friends from Vic Roads. This was done by way of portable scales, all fully tested and certified.

GTM was measured hitched up.

Caravan was unhitched.

Ball weight was measured and ATM calculated.

These were then compared to plated ratings for the caravan and tow bar.

41 caravans were overweight in 1 or more category.

Most were within 10% of plated ratings.

5 were 20% over their plated ratings.

ATM was the most common issue, followed by actual ball weight and then tow bar capacity.

Highest over rating on ATM was 2880 kg on a plated ATM of 2600 kg.

Most over rating on ball download was 400 kg on max of 280 kg

Most over on Tow bar loading was 400 kg on max of 300 kg

Most ATM offences were in the 1500 kg to 2500 kg size vans. Camper trailers were the worst offenders. Loaded with bikes, kayaks, generators, tool boxes etc. Most of these had maximum ATM around 1650 and were consistently 100 plus kg over. These were also being towed by the smallest cars, many of them sedans that did not have the capacity to tow those weights. These were generally families of 4 or 5 and the car was also loaded up to max.

We did not have the time to weigh tow vehicles. However, those that were obviously an issue were given further advice. Overloaded tow vehicles are not included in the 41 offenders. If they had been I estimate at least another 15 or more offences against GVM and GCM would have been recorded.

Several with tinnies on the roof were weighed and none were significantly over on van weight. GVM/GCM may have been an issue.

Most notable tow vehicle offence was an older model Colorado towing a 5th wheeler. The 5th wheeler went to 3.5 tonne. The rear axle on the Colorado went 2.1 tonne. We did not unhitch. The Colorado also had boxes of tools, fuel and a generator in the back. They were full timers on the road and we had quite along chat.

Where possible, I had a look inside those vans that were overweight. The common issue here was that if you had placed items on the floor, under beds, on chairs and so on, then the van was overweight. If everything fitted into a proper cupboard and was not loose somewhere in the van, they were generally less likely to be overweight. One customer who was 350 kg over weight plead innocence as to how he could possibly be overweight. Then I opened his door and the first item at the door was an old steel 4 burner BBQ. 4 bikes to add to the 2 on the back, tents, swags, inflatable boats and lots of bags of clothes. He estimated he had 350 kg in his van. He had close to 700 kg if Tare was right.

Almost all were very surprised at what they actually weighed. Some just did not believe the scales.

Some of those using WDH believed that they allowed them to load more than ATM into the van because it would be transferred to the car via the hitch.

One person calculated what his payload could be by loading his van to ATM, then adding on what he measured his ball weight as because that came off the ATM when hitched. So ATM 3500, load to 3850 because the 350 kg was going on the tow ball and viola, back down to rated ATM. That was another long chat.

Of most concern was that most drivers had little idea of what they actually weighed. The fact we only had 41 offenders I think was more by luck than any sort of planning by the driver.

A number of those passing through were given some help in re organising their payload distribution to bring them closer to ratings.

All drivers were given a handout produced by Colin Young from the Caravan Council of Australia. This explained each of the ratings and how to weigh the rig at a weighbridge. We tried to keep the information simple to avoid info overload. Just concentrating on the van helped and when I experimented with talking tug weights, eyes would glass over and I lost them, so that was avoided.

The conversations had with drivers, co-drivers and family were far more valuable than the weight data collected. It gave an insight into how the average man thinks and what he understands about weights and safety. All expressed a desire to be compliant.

Most knew where to find the information they needed, but unfortunately complacency was apparent. The social media campaign was paramount in making this operation successful. The responses to these posts was nothing short of amazing. 100,000's of hits on each article released. Of note was that many of those reading the articles on various sites went on to click other tags that led them to caravan specific safety articles. Police media released their article on the morning of the operation. In the next two days, it was viewed over 52,000 times and over 400 comments left, mostly positive. New pictures were uploaded to police media during the two days and these continued to boost hits.

I also did 3 ABC Radio spots, 2 recorded and 1 live from the site. Local media also attended. I have either written or been interviewed by several other big caravan publications, and had calls from TV shows and other interested stakeholders from around the country. So more publicity is still to come. In essence, we have reached many 100,000's of people genuinely interested in being safe. And all we did was talk to around 80 people towing a van and post some pics of it happening.

Checks in addition to caravans

Two tickets were given for inadequate mirrors, one towing a caravan. There were tickets for unregistered, unlicensed and unroadworthy issues too. One failed drug test but no drink drivers from over 1700 tests.

The Sheriff had a massive couple of days executing over 600 warrants and collecting or arranging payments in excess of $200,000. None from caravanners.

Where to from here?

It is apparent that there is a knowledge gap amongst caravan users. This will be addressed with more of the same. More weighing, more social media. Caravanners seem to have a thirst for information and appear very receptive of advice.

We are exploring how we can get this information into the hands of new buyers in particular.

Continued focus on education for a further period of time. This will eventually have to go into enforcement but there are a whole load of issues that would need to be ironed out before that happens.

Vic Roads have signposted a change in direction and are now happy to collaborate in helping to educate caravan users. This is a change and a fair commitment from Vic Roads as obviously a large proportion of their time is taken with the heavy vehicle industry.

Looking at how to get some sort of (compulsory) towing course built into the sale of new caravans. I know some have already tried but the cost seems to be an issue, so that needs to be explored.

That course could lead to maybe a licence endorsement of some sort. However, this is a huge can of worms and has no end of pitfalls and considerations to overcome, but maybe it is time to have a proper look.

Work with manufacturers in relation to Tare weights being correctly plated. This did come up in conversations. Some had looked at the plate, estimated what the payload sort of was and believed they may be close to allowable ATM. I had to agree with some of them that it was fairly obvious the Tare was wrong from day one out of the dealers.

Together with Vic Roads, I am heading to Mallacoota in March for a few days and will be weighing all the ACC members attending the East Gippsland Muster.

My thanks to those who assisted with this publicity.

Sgt Graeme Shenton

I use a spreadsheet to track vehicle and camper-trailer weights. Following is the summary page of this. There are some input data required to get to a summary of weights...

Cumbersome?

No easily updated at any time.

Overkill?

Perhaps some may think that, but I know to a high level of confidence vehicle weight at any time. And as this current exercise in Victoria indicates, authorities are checking and many people have no idea how much they weigh...

Bearing in mind, I only need to do it once before leaving on a trip...

For most the only weight variable when travelling is fuel, as the vehicle burns fuel the weight will change. I cover that by simply populating current ODO reading into the spreadsheet and it recalculates vehicle weight to a "reasonable" level of confidence based on an average fuel burn.

The detail shown is a summary page only, I have a separate sheet for recording the weight of items. Anyone with excel skills can do this, but happy to assist if anyone has an interest.

Cheers, Baz - The Landy