How to master the art of towing safely

Nobody wants to end up on Clayton Towing’s Facebook page as another example of an accident, so in this ultimate guide to towing series instalment, Robert Pepper discusses how to master the art of towing safely.

Now, one thing I want to make clear right up front is that towing, and towing safely, is absolutely NOT a matter of common sense, whatever that means, and however piously OldMate58 in the caravan park happy hour group might opine to his little audience. Very little about towing is obvious to a layperson, and while someone like a mechanical engineer will have a head start, even they can learn a few things.  So, here’s a list of safety considerations when towing:

Know how your car works

Do you have TSC on your car? What even is TSC? Read our sway article for more.  Does your car permit a load distribution hitch?  Can you run your car in AWD mode?  Is there a specialist tow mode?  How do you manually select gears, even in an automatic?  Does cruise control slow you as you descend, or will the car run away?  Which of the car’s safety features work differently, or not at all when towing safely? 

There’s a lot to learn about any given car, and all of the above points are safety-critical. This series of towing articles cover most of it, but not all. I wish I could give you a definitive list for towing safely, but there’s too many cars and variations, and I cannot say a towing course will cover them all, but it’s a good start, as is the owner’s manual. You cannot set your rig up if you don’t know what you’ve got to work with.

Set it up right

Now you know what you’ve got, time to configure.  This is where our previous articles help; weight distribution, choosing towcars, brakes, tyre age, tyre pressures, towing mirrors, hitch height, tyre pressure changes and more, all go towards making sure your rig is safe. The best driver in the world cannot compensate for a poor setup.

Prevent sway

This is a special focus as the worst thing that can happen to a tower, outside of a collision, is sway.  Read up on our sway article about what sway is, and how to prevent it.

Handling

The rig won’t go around corners as nicely as just the towcar.  Go slower, and focus on smoothness.

Braking

Leave more room for braking, as you cannot stop as quickly as when you’re not towing. See our braking article on setting up your trailer brake controller to optimise trailer braking for safer towing.

Descending hills

Use lower gears on the towcar to preserve the brakes on both the towcar and the trailer and set the trailer brakes appropriately for descents. Again, see our braking article for more guidance.

Handling the length

Remember you are driving a longer vehicle and need extra room to manoeuvre.

Looking ahead

This one tip will solve a lot of problems when it comes to towing safely. It means thinking several seconds ahead of the car, even more than when it is unhitched, and taking early action. 

For example, predicting traffic flow, not being surprised by a red light when the green was obviously stale, seeing the body language of other road users and proactively reacting. It doesn’t mean crawling everywhere at a snail’s pace.

Know how to handle emergency situations

This does NOT mean you drive like a loon, relying on your ability to car-control your way out of trouble if it happens.  It means that, if the worst comes to the worse, you know what to do, and how to do it.  Specifically, you should understand and practice two scenarios:

• Emergency stops at cruise speed – start at low speeds then work up to cruise.
• Operating the brake controller to combat sway – no need to induce sway, just know how to operate the controller – again, see our sway article for details.  That will also tell you about the signs of sway.

Driving to the conditions

If it’s dry, flat, smooth, a calm day…sure, cruise at the speed limit. But when it’s downhill, bumpy, wet and windy…well, all those factors increase the chance of sway, so slow down for safe towing! 

Driving to the conditions is advice often sagely intoned by well-meaning people, but have you ever asked them what it means?  They’ve never really thought about it.  Well, that’s the answer. It’s adapt your speed and style to what is happening, and that means looking at risk factors, then deciding how you’ll drive.

UHF Radio

Fitting a UHF radio can only contribute to towing safety as you can then talk to others, such as truck drivers, and they you.  That might be the difference between a nasty situation, or not.  Channel 40 is the usual road channel, and Channel 18 is usual for caravanners. You can let truckies by, or plan your overtake as examples.

Be kind to others

Don’t force, or inadvertently encourage others to take risks because that’s not safe for them, or you. For example, on a windy road where there are cars behind you…allow them past, lest they attempt risky overtakes.  Please don’t be one of these people who just think “well, I am driving my own pace, within the law, it is no concern of mine that others are faster”.  Always think – how could I make life easier and safer for others?

Fatigue management

Not specific to towing safely, but caravanning often involves long distance driving so fatigue management starts to play a part. See our cruising article for more information, and remember that whilst towing often makes driving more stressful, you are now pulling a ready-made rest stop so you don’t need to wait for a servo to have a cuppa or even a powernap.

Challenge advice

If the advice can’t be explained and substantiated, it’s probably not worth following and in the caravanning world, there’s a lot of well-meaning but wrong advice. It is also important to keep up to date as things change; trailer stability control is new, for example, and the automatic gearboxes of today are much more advanced than those of yesterday so the “must lock out top gear” advice no longer applies.

Ignore the “it’s so easy don’t worry” crowd

Towing isn’t easy.  And the “didn’t even feel the caravan on the back” crowd are either lying, or unable to detect what they should be sensitive enough to detect.  Towing can be low-stress, but that’s built on a foundation of understanding what’s going on and why.  Happy towing!

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