Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Adventure
But I've never had a hitch latch pop open unexpectedly in all those years with all those trailers. And, having calculated it carefully with our WDH discussions, the WDH plus the tongue weight together provide 1150# holding the tongue to the hitch ball, so the odds of the TM bouncing off the hitch ball are already pretty remote, IMO.
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Approximately 1970.
Ford truck, towing home built wood/fiberglass, southbound US101, right lane, Sausalito, just before Waldo Grade.
There is a modest up and over in the freeway lanes over a culvert.
Trailer hitch fails.
Safety chains snap.
Trailer with boat turns left, crossing 3 lanes of traffic.
Trailer gets stuck in center guard rail.
Boat snaps all straps holding boat onto trailer.
Trailer remains lodged in guard rail while boat becomes airborne.
While airborne, boat clears 3 lanes of northbound traffic.
Airborne boat collides with front bumper of northbound Greyhound bus, in the right most lane.
Damage to bus, one front bumper.
Damage to other vehicles all around, zero.
Damage to Ford truck that previously had a boat and trailer in tow, zero.
The boat was loaded into the bed of the truck for transport home. The largest piece was about 3 foot by 3 foot.
35 horsepower Johnson outboard motor and trailer were undamaged, not counting a few cosmetic dents and scrapes.
It had been a good day fishing.
It took my brother nearly two years to build that boat.
Probable cause is a boat too large for the trailer.
Question, Given a boat sitting on the ground next to a boat trailer, how do you determine if the boat is too big?
The mass (weight) of the boat is unknown. Difficult to weigh, but not impossible.
The dimensions are measurable.
Rating for the trailer is unknown. Size of the trailer can be measured. Thickness of the metal can be measured.
The trailer has no brakes.
Just as a wild guess, somewhere around 100 people on the freeway had a lucky day.