Why Caravans Roll Over

Caravans and their tow-vehicles have a unique type of accident (jackknifing and rolling over). The cause is known and long understood. The rig is triggered from its intended stabilising characteristic (understeer) into seriously escalating unstabilising oversteer.

In conjunction with caravan and other issues, your tow vehicle's margin of understeer ultimately determines your rig's stability and especially how it will act in an emergency swerve at high speed.

If understeer is reduced to zero (or minus) the tow vehicle will oversteer. If not corrected in time the rig may jackknife, especially at high speed.

Why Caravans Roll Over examines causes of caravan roll over in detail and in plain English. It provides ways to evaluate and improve the safety of your own rig. It identifies high risk situations and gives clear advice about how to avoid the dangers that are very much a part of towing a caravan.

Auteur

Originally trained as an RAF ground radar engineer, Collyn Rivers spent a brief time with de Havilland designing power systems for guided missiles, before becoming a test engineer at the Vauxhall/Bedford Motors Research Test Centre.He migrated to Australia in 1963, where he designed and built scientific measuring equipment. In 1971, Collyn Rivers founded what, by 1976, became the world's largest-circulation electronics publication, Electronics Today International.From 1982 to 1990 he was technology editor of The Bulletin and also Australian Business magazines and in 1999 started two companies: Caravan and Motorhome Books, and Successful Solar Books (now rvbooks.com.au and solarbooks.com.au)."Anyone who has been an electronics enthusiast over the past 30 years or so will be well aware of Collyn Rivers. He was the founding editor of "Electronics Today International" (ETI) magazine which went on to have a number of very successful editions in the UK and elsewhere, as well as being very successful in Australia."Silicon Chip Magazine.