Mr. Funnypuns, I agree. There are times when you simply have to do something to avoid immediate disaster - jerk the wheel or stomp on the brake - and you describe one of those times very well. I think the question is, once you have avoided the immediate situation, what do you do next? If you continue to saw at the steering wheel, or hold the brake to the floor, the situation may quickly become much worse.
Short story. We were driving along a nice level stretch of Interstate in the midwest, at about 60 mph. There was a hard-packed dirt farm road running next to us. As I watched, a pickup truck accelerated past us on that road. He was towing a small flatbed trailer, properly loaded with a dozen bales of hay. They approached a softball-sized rock in the road, and the driver twitched the wheel to avoid it. The trailer began to sway just a little, and began to recover, but the farmhand panicked and tried to steer out of it with a jerk of the steering wheel. That made the sway worse. He swung the wheel left and right, farther and harder, in a desperate attempt to get control, then slammed on the brakes. The trailer jack-knifed, and pulled the whole rig, truck and trailer, into the ditch upside down. Fortunately the ditch was grassy and they both just slid along to a stop. But if he had resisted the urge to saw at the steering wheel, the rig would have self-corrected. The point is that for whatever reason, the timing of your natural reactions to a swaying motion are wrong, and things get more violent and go out of control in a hurry.
Shane -
If you Google "how to tow a trailer safely" you will get a lot of hits. Some of the hits point you to articles rather than full-blown courses, but they all reach very similar conclusions. An example of an article is
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars...tow-a-trailer/.
The RV Safety and Education Foundation (RVSEF) has actual courses, some of which are conducted at a hands-on training site, some in classrooms, and some as online videos. Some of these courses have a fee. The RVSEF seems to concentrate primarily on weight, weight distribution, and trailer loading, but they have a lot to offer in other areas as well. Check out their list of courses at
http://rvsafety.com/courses
The Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) offers courses. FMCA tends to concentrate on motor homes rather than towables, but a lot of the conclusions are the same.
https://www.fmca.com/motorhome/basic...ng-course.html
Some private outfits like RVUniversity or RF Videos on Demand offer training courses.
There seem to be a lot of sources. The biggest issue is weeding through them and finding one that is within your budget (if they have a cost), in your area (if they involve hands-on training), and at a time that meets your needs.
Bill
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