All the right moves – a rapid appraisal of helpful towing guidance

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

At Safe Towing we're acutely aware of the need for safe driving practices, and making sure drivers are conscious of the need to be considerate to all other road users.   We believe Safe T-Signs help, alongside drivers' attitudes to being safe on the road and not taking unnecessary risks.

While I’ve been working on Safe T-Sign I’ve read a great deal of guidance on towing (readers, let me know if list is lacking in anything essential).   

This week I’m sharing a rapid appraisal of the best of what’s out there!

The most comprehensive guidance is Roadcraft: Towing: The Essential Towing Handbook.   I regard this as the towing bible.  It largely covers how you drive when you’re towing.

It's written by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).  It begins by talking about driving attitudes:

“… the bedrock of safe towing is your attitude to risk, safety and the need for hazard awareness … if you drive without regard to the safety of yourself and other road users you put lives and property at risk”. (page 1).

"Research evidence shows that attitudes affect towing safety … it depends on … making a personal commitment to changing unsafe attitudes.…These qualities depend on: …

·         A good level of concentration

·         Accurate observation ….

·         Awareness of the risks inherent in particular road and traffic situations

·         Acting to keep identified risks to a minimum

·         Awareness of their own limitations and those of the outfit and the road

·         Skillful use of vehicle controls and towing technique

·         Attitudes that contribute to road safety

It is not simply the speed of your reactions that determines whether you are safe but your ability to identify and respond to hazards…." (page 2)

It makes the crucial point that you shouldn’t second guess what other drivers have seen – roads can be very busy places.

"Anticipating the actions of other road users is critical for safety.   Never assume that other road users have either seen you or are going to react according to the Highway Code.  Watch other drivers’ general progress and road behaviour to get some idea of what sort of driver they are.  But always be aware that even the most conscientious of drivers can make mistakes." (page 89)

  

I recommend The Essential Towing Handbook to anyone who tows and anyone who is serious about safe towing and road safety. 

I couldn’t miss Hitched, by the Highways Agency 

Hitched is an excellent and comprehensive guide to ensuring that your trailer is fit for purpose, that you understand the technicalities and practicalities of setting yourself up to tow safely and to maintain your trailer.  It’s designed to be a constant companion in your tow car and will serve you well.

It has a real focus on ensuring that your trailer is road-worthy and was a part of the Highway’s Agency’s Fit to Tow” campaign which was particularly aimed at reducing the inconvenience caused by towing accidents, particularly on the motorways – lane closures, delays, traffic disruption. As well as informative general articles, there are dedicated sections focussing on utility trailers, caravans, livestock trailers and large trailers for heavy loads.

The NTTA’s Guide to Safe and Legal Towing is also very good. 

http://www.ntta.co.uk/downloads/SafeLegalTowingShort.pdf

The presentation could be improved,  but it's a comprehensive guide, well written and thorough.  It covers technical aspects of hitching up, good preparation and it has very sound advice on driving while towing.

Very comprehensive and aimed at a wide range of towers.  The diagrams are very helpful. 

I’ve been really impressed by the guidance from the Amateur Rowing Association and the British Rowing Organisation, Trailer Towing and Trailer Driving Guidance

The guidance is comprehensive, pitched at a good level so that it both covers the ground and makes people think about how they approach towing.  For me the rowing organisations have stood out in producing succinct, focussed guidance that really hits their target organisations.

  

Other guidance which I think is very helpful and targeted at particular audiences are:

The National Caravan Council’s Caravan Towing Guide

Specifically aimed at caravanners, and a very comprehensive guide for all caravanners on:

• safely matching cars to caravans
• selecting the ratio of caravan weight to car weight for safe towing
• things to take into account before towing a caravan
• good driving techniques

I like it – plenty of pictures, concise, easy to understand and really targeted at its audience.

The Camping and Caravan Club’s Guide, Safe for the Road

This is comprehensive, but perhaps a bit less accessible than the other guidance. I particularly like the bullets at the end which cover “Be considerate to other road users” – don’t ever underestimate the value of courteous attitudes and behaviours.

VOSA’s guide for Horsebox and Trailer owners

This is a quite specialist guide for horsebox and trailer owners.  It covers some of the more technical issues around carrying goods and livestock, roadworthiness and the special requirements associated with horseboxes and licensing.  It's a good overview for people who are moving into horsebox and trailer territory.

How Trailer Towing Safety Works

Lastly, I found this helpful – it’s from the US, so excuse some of the terminology, but an accessible way of understanding some of the issues associated with towing.

What guidance have readers found useful?

I'd be interested to hear what guidance readers have found helpful and why.  We also think Safe T-Signs are an important part of the Safe Towing agenda - help other drivers know that you're towing, that there's more to you than meets the eye!

Safe T-Signs

Safe T-Signs are important because they can be seen, even when trailers can't.  They can make a positive impact on driver behaviours out and about and driving on the road – where it matters. 

Safe T-Sign is about positively promoting good driving behaviour, by:

• Enabling other drivers to better see when a vehicle is towing so that they are able to respond appropriately and considerately

• Raising awareness in the drivers of towing outfits about the need to drive considerately and defensively.

   See our website:
Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Safe Towing is about safe driving practices, as well as making sure that drivers are alert to the need to drive with consideration towards all other road users.  Alongside using the technical and driving advice from the best of the guidance to help you prepare to tow safely, Safe T-Sign should be part of your routine before you set off to tow, to help you and other road users to be safe.

Safe Towing - Promoting Safe Towing for all road users and the use of Safe T-Signs

Safe T-Sign: ® Community Design Registration 817085-002

Follow Safe Towing on Twitter and Facebook

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

...Smile

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

We took some new photo's of Safe T-Signs at the weekend for the new web site.  Nothing spectacular, but what they do show is...

.... they go on




They come off....

And they really stand out!

We're looking at getting new stock soon.... and we hope to get more positive feedback from customers ...

See our website:

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

... Safe T-Sign - because of other drivers

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

Safe T-Sign was Phil's idea.  I asked him how he thought of the idea.

"I'd been towing a 5' x 3' camping trailer over a period of a few years. 

It was really noticeable to me how many times other drivers tried to nose in quickly behind me - busy junctions and roundabouts were a real problem.  On roundabouts in particular, as I passed other vehicles, other vehicles would try and nudge in - in the space where my trailer was, even though I had right of way.

There was nothing I could do to let other people know there was a trailer behind me.

I thought that if you could put something on the car, so that even when other people couldn't see the trailer, they had something to tell them I was towing, that it would help.

It took me a couple of years to do something about it - get a Design Right, get some signs made...."

We also asked people who'd used T-Sign in the past for feedback.  Some of the comments we got back were:


"The main reason i invested in the signs was for safety reasons and plus the fact on a large island I was negotiating with my discovery and twin axle tourer when some idiot had not realised I was towing a nearly 8m long caravan and had tried to slot in by hind my car and then realised his mistake to which i had had to take exceptional driving manoeuvres to avoid a collision. I can express the importance that these signs make to road safety especially when towing coming out of side roads on to main roads even in country lanes especially with motor bikes as they are difficult to see and that they travel so fast and are on top of you in know time at all. When ever i tow i make sure these signs are fitted I would rather be seen than somebody not realise that I am towing until it is too late.  I hope that with your e-mail that you are considering to relaunch such a possible life saving product even if it is just one life saved.  I hope to see more people using the Safe T-Sign on my travels."



"I originally used them when towing a small camping trailer behind a medium sized camper van which hid the trailer. Now having a large motor home, I find them a necessity when towing the small trailer and an extra safety feature when towing my Smart car on a small car trailer to avoid lorries tail ending / side swiping, particularly on motorways. I have had numerous people ask me why I use them but they quickly appreciate the sense of them when the safety aspect is explained."



"Have found the Safe T-Signs very handy when towing especially at night and in bad visability, give other motorists warning of longer vehicle. very easy to apply and store in their pouch."



"They should be mandatory"



We think Safe T-Sign is a positive contribution to road safety.  In Road Safety week, we'd be really interested to hear from people who have experience of their trailer not being seen while towing.  Let us know and tell us whether a Safe T-Sign might have helped!


See our website:

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm


Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

Tow Safe, Tow Happy

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

Towing Safety

Putting the unseasonal chilliness to one side, the late May Bank holiday in the UK is traditional a high point in the towing year, whether it's towing for pleasure - carvans, trailer tents, boats and horse, or towing for more functional purposes, like moving garden or household waste or equipment.

The road safety agenda is vitally important - every one who sets off on any journey wants to get back safely. Being seen is the most important factor in Road Safety.  The statistics are  compelling and the headlines are well known:

• Road traffic accidents account for almost half of all accidental deaths in Britain.
• “Failed to look properly is the most frequently reported contributory factor and is involved in 40 per cent of all reported accidents.

So roads are dangerous and one of the most dangerous things about being on them is that other people may not see you.

Safe Towing is an aspect of road safety which doesn't get enough recognition.  It’s time to get it on the road safety agenda. 

So, what’s the big deal about towing accidents?

Towing accidents – what's the big deal?

Drivers of outfits towed by a car or light commercial vehicle have about 1500 accidents involving personal injury each year.  This is more than four personal injury accidents every day - I think that's quite a lot.  And because there is a seasonal element, for some times of the year the figure will be much higher.

Caravans are involved in about 300 personal injury accidents each year. We also know that the overwhelming majority of towing accidents take place at a junction.

The relatively low percentage figure for trailer accidents reflects the relatively low level of trailer use in the driving population at large, and the low average annual mileage of most trailers ie so towing accidents are a larger proportion of towing journeys. 

 

Towing accidents are more severe

Facts and figures on towing accidents are difficult to get at, but in it exists.  Research by the Transport Research Laboratory indicated that Towing accidents tend to be more severe.

Transport Research Laboratory, 2011

“Analysis for the five year period  2005-2009 identified a total of 4,173 reported accidents involving at least one car or light goods vehicle towing , representing 0.5% of the overall reported accidents.  Of these accidents, 100 were fatal (2.4%), 671 were serious (16.1%) and 3,402 were slight (81.5%).  The corresponding percentages for all cars/ vans are about 1% fatal, 11% serious and 88% slight, so there is some indication that tow combinations are slightly more likely to be involved in severe accidents.”

 

The real focus of road safety has to be:

• Helping people to drive as well as they can when they’re on the road, so, being road worthy is important, as is driving well
• Doing things to help and encourage all road users observe, drive better and take fewer risks 
• Anything that can reduce the risk of accidents, save lives and keep people safe

Safe Towing with Safe T-Sign

At Safe Towing we have a mission – to improve road safety for all road users and to promote the use of Safe T-Signs.

Safe T-Sign is a high visibility, reflective, magnetic safety sign, specially designed for people who tow trailers of all kinds.  You stick them to the driver and passenger doors of your vehicle before you start your journey.

Safe T-Signs are seen by other road users when, for example, your vehicle is pulling out of a junctions, or onto a traffic island, or at night, so that other road users know what to expect. 

The distinctive TOWING sign is a clear signal to other road users that you're towing a trailer.

They are effective in the day and at night.  They can be seen from 50m and they are reflective in the dark.

Three good reasons for you to use Safe T-Sign are:

• You want to be safe
• You want other road users to be safe
• You want the things you tow to be safe
  
   
  
  

Safe T-Sign is about:

• Safer towing
• Helping reduce vehicle accidents and making drivers and other road users safer
• Promoting careful and considerate driving

How do I get a Safe T-Sign?

See our website:

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

... Mind the antelope

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

I read a really interesting blog last week, “What an RAF pilot can teach us about being safe on the road”.

http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/raf-pilot-teach-cyclists/

It's aimed at cyclists, but a very stimulating read, and it applies to road safety in general.

“Sorry mate, I didn’t see you” – the hypothesis

John Sullivan is a Royal Air Force pilot with over 4,000 flight hours in his career and a crash investigator.  He's also a keen cyclist.

His key point is:

Our eyes aren't designed for driving.  Our eyes and brain are perfectly designed for creeping up on unsuspecting antelopes and spotting the odd sabre-toothed tiger. But no one primed them for traffic, cars, cyclists,  and I'd argue, trailers and things being towed.

Why?

Only a small part of the retina, the centre bit, generates a high-resolution image. This is why we need to look directly at something to see the detail.  The rest of the retina lacks detail but contributes by adding the peripheral vision.  However,only 20 degrees away from your sight line your visual acuity is about 1/10th of what it is at the centre.

Try this test to see quite how much detail you lose in your peripheral vision

• Stand 10 metres away from the front or back of a car
• Move your eyes and look just one car’s width to the right or left of that car
• Without moving where your eyes are now looking, try and read the number plate of the car
• Try the test again from 5m

This shows you how little detail you see from the side of your eyes.

It's not that we can’t see things in our peripheral vision, but to have a good chance of seeing an object on a collision course, we need to move our eyes, and probably head, to bring the object into the centre of our vision – so that we can use our high-resolution vision to resolve the detail.

Here’s when things get really interesting

When you move your head and eyes to scan a scene, your eyes are incapable of moving smoothly across it and seeing everything. Instead, you see in the image in a series of very quick jumps (called saccades) with very short pauses (called fixations). It's only during the pauses that an image is processed.

Your brain fills in the gaps by combining murky peripheral vision with assumptions that what’s in the gaps is the same as what is seen during the pauses.

Your brain actually blocks the image being received while your eyes are moving. This is why you don't see the sort of blurred image, which you see when you look sideways out of a train window.  The exception is if you’re tracking a moving object.

Another test to try

• Look in a mirror.

• Look repeatedly from your right eye to your left eye.

• Can you see your eyes moving? You can’t.

• Repeat the test with a friend and watch them. You'll see their eyes moving quite markedly

You can’t see your own eyes move because your brain shuts down the image for the instant that your eyes are moving. This is called Saccadic masking.

In the past, it meant we could creep up on antelopes without our brain being overloaded by unnecessary detail and a lot of useless, blurred images.

However, in a modern day situation, such as a traffic junction, it means we miss "obvious" things?

At a traffic junction all but the worst of drivers will look in both directions to check for oncoming traffic. However, our eyes sometimes “jump over” oncoming bicycles or motorbikes, or trailers behind vehicles.

This isn’t really a case of a careless driver, it’s more of a human incapacity to see anything during a saccade. Hence the reason for so many “Sorry mate, I didn’t see you” excuses..

The faster you move your head, the larger the jumps and the shorter the pauses. Therefore, you’ve got more of a chance of missing a vehicle.

We're effectively seeing through solid objects, with our brain filling in the image.

How accidents happen

So, when you're towing, if other drivers don’t expect there to be a trailer, even a great big one, their brain is more likely to automatically jump to the conclusion that the vehicle they see is the car, and that's all there is to see.

One comment from a tower about people not seeing the obvious includes:

" ....on a large island I was negotiating with my discovery and twin axle tourer when some idiot had not realised I was towing a nearly 8m long caravan and tried to slot in behind my car and then realised his mistake to which I had had to take exceptional driving manoeuvres to avoid a collision!"

Forewarned is forearmed, so here’s what we can do.

Cyclists are very vulnerable and the comments on the London cyclist blog show real understanding and appreciation of the issues.  This includes cyclists relating incidents that happened to them as car drivers, when they haven't been expecting to see something and so on.    I think it's really important that we recognise the special vulnerabilities of cyclists and motor cyclists and support initiatives that will make them safer for them.

Equally, we need to recognise that towing also presents some challenges - if another driver can't see the trailer because of other vehicles, or because it's out of their line of sight, then they will behave like it's not there.

Using a Safe T-Sign on the side of your car means that if other drivers can see your car then they can be alerted to the fact that there's something else to follow your vehicle.  They are reflective, so they will catch the light and the eye of other drivers.  As Safe T-Signs become a more familiar sight on the road, other road users will instantly recognise what they mean and they will register that there is something else to look out for.

I'd be really interested to hear about instance when drivers who tow have found that their trailer, however big or small, is invisible to other road users and whether this it was the antelope effect.

See our website:

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

Freedom vs personal choice vs road safety

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

Episode 2 of the BBC’s “How Safe are Britain’s Roads?” programme last night was very thought provoking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nt3ys/How_Safe_are_Britains_Roads_Episode_2/

(Episode 1 was also worth seeing).

As well as demonstrating what we all already know about the dangers of mobile phones and alcohol while driving, they also touched on the age old debate of men vs women, who is safer and youth vs age, who is more dangerous.

The answer wasn’t about which group, but came down to individuals and their propensity for risk.

There were also some wonderful quotes from the various contributors to the programme:

“… we’re the worst people to assess our own driving ability”

“… there is no such thing as an accident, everything has a cause…”

“… humans are the biggest problem…”

“… but as we all know, humans are often reluctant to take the safest course…”

On a slightly different tack, I was speaking to a firm of insurance brokers earlier this week about Safe T-Signs (see information on the right hand side of the page).  I said a lot of people really got it – saw the point, saw how they could contribute to making towing safer.  But there were a hard core of people who said “why would I use them, that’s why I have insurance?”

She said “I understand totally what you say.  We hear it all the time, people who don’t see why they should have insurance, or else only take it reluctantly”.

Despite the evidence, too many drivers think accidents will never happen to them.  They don’t think about the consequences for them and for other people.  It’s not because of the people who die as a result of road accidents that we need insurance; it’s because of the people who survive and whose lives will never be the same again.

We owe it to other people to do everything we can to be safe.

See our website:

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm 

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

... what you see is....

Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm

Optical illusions are fascinating.  They demonstrate that perception is illusion, that what we see, our brain interprets.  But we still all instictively believe that what we see is real.

For amusement here are a few optical illusions!

Try counting the black dots...

Which line does line C conncet to - A or B?

And this is one you must remember from school - is it a vase or is it two faces?



And this is good for tying our brain up in knots!

And this one has a transport theme to it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgM16127NM4&feature=player_embedded

The point of all of this is we need to be aware that sometimes we don't see things we should, as they actually are.  Sometimes we only see what experience has taught us to expect.

How many times have you carefully, meticulously, looked both ways and then, as you move out you realise that there's a a bike or a motorbike that you missed?  It's not unusual - it happens to us all.  We're looking out for cars or lorries but not for smaller objects such as bicycles or motorcycles or trailers.  When we concentrate we don’t just look at a particular part of a scene, we look for particular things in that scene.  It's easier to notice things we expect to see, and react to them. Conversely we fail to see things that we don't expect to see.

There is a wonderful quote in a report by the Motor Industry Research Association about crashes into the sides of large HGVs.  Of a number of accidents that they researched they could only simply say "... The driver should have seen the truck but for some reason did not appear to do so ...".

Safe T-Sign is a practical and proportionate safety addition for people who tow:

• The sign warns other road users that there is a trailer to follow
• They are reflective, so they catch the eye and, particularly as they become better known, will trigger a response in people to prepare for something else to be following the vehicle
• They take account of the fact that people who tow are do it occasionally, so they can be used when people are towing, removed when they stop!

See our website:

http://www.safetowing.co.uk/index.htm


Whatever kind of trailer you’re towing, Safe T Signs mean Safe Towing! Be seen and be safe when you emerge from junctions or roundabouts, and when you are towing in the dark.

Buy Safe T Signs from our website here:  http://www.safetowing.co.uk/buy-now.htm