Bird’s Eye View

BIRDS EYE VIEW by Carol Messenger

The time of year that most truckies dread - school holidays and with it comes the huge increase in road traffic as everyone flees the urban centre heading for 'the outback'.

This year is worse than ever, as because of COVID-19, we can't head to Bali, or Singapore or New Zealand - we have to holiday at home - well our home state anyway. We have to 'wander out yonder' as the advertising tells us. Flee the city and head out bush, and herein lies one of the major problems for the transport sector - caravans with drivers who are untrained, inexperienced, unprepared and downright dangerous.

These are the people that cause us to suffer from Carav-anger as we have to deal with 'once or twice a year' explorers of the great unknown.

I have always been a firm believer in the idea that you ought to have to have a caravan licence before being allowed to head out like a snail with your home on your back.

These days, where the caravan can far exceed the towing vehicle in both length and weight, drivers definitely need some training to help them adjust their common sense before being allowed out into the flow of traffic.

This should include training that details correct loading so that the caravan is balanced and also does not cause the car lights to be pointing straight up into a truck driver's eyes. Training that makes them check the lights, the tyres and the brakes of the caravan - all which have not been touched since it was parked in the garage six months ago after the last school holidays.

Training so that they understand their position on the road and how to safely interact with trucks particularly if overtaking or being overtaken.

Too many inexperienced caravanner’s panic when a truck passes them and this can have fatal consequences. 91% of all caravan accidents are caused by sudden swaying or shaking or snaking and it takes only a sudden one inch left or right movement at 80kph and an inexperienced driver has no chance of pulling it back.

We do not have the luxury of flat, wide roads with broad shoulders that would give a driver a chance of correcting an error - instead we have narrow, bumpy roads with little or no shoulders that sadly leave a driver in a precarious position if anything goes wrong.

For many caravanner’s, the opportunity to 'just hook up and go' is exactly that. There is no preparation, no pre check or road worthiness check before they head out to what could well be a trip of 1000 kilometres or more over often unfamiliar roads.

There is just the excitement of 'let’s go'. Sadly, for many, this exuberance can have serious, costly and sometimes fatal consequences. According to statistics, in the last year 80% of caravan accidents resulted in total loss. If something is going to go wrong, it will go wrong in a big way, so by doing a pre check you can at least try and even those scales up a bit.

Caravans have always been a nightmare for trucks, the fact that they often travel well below the speed limit makes it hard for trucks to pass - trying to get speed and timing right when you are pulling a triple road train is no mean feat and when the caravan driver is uncooperative or unhelpful it just makes our job even harder.

Trucks are on the road to ‘work’, to provide essential supplies to keep this country running - it would be nice if they were treated with a little more respect and courtesy - and don't even get me started on caravans and parking bays or fuel stops.