.

Product Spotlight

SAFETY TOW

How Safe are Safety Chains

Looking beneath the headlines of the GM settlement in that deadly Florida gas tank rupture, it is useful to examine not just the result, but the actual cause of the accident. A trailer came loose from a pickup truck, crossed a median, and crashed into a station wagon stopped at a toll booth, its tongue piercing the vehicle's gas tank and starting the fire.

With so much media coverage of GM's part in the tragedy, it seems that very little attention has been paid to that trailer. Why did it come loose? Here is an accident, one in a large and common set, that didn't have to happen.

Almost everyone who has ever pulled a trailer from the bumper of his vehicle realizes the potential for losing it as he pulls it down the road, and many could provide their own personal horror stories which approximate the GM Florida tale, in style and scariness if not in seriousness or expense. There are several reasons why a trailer may decouple en route. While mechanical coupling devices can and do wear out, surely human error accounts for most cases, as people neglect to check connections properly, or mismatch coupling components.

Bumper towed trailers use a ball and socket attachment system which has been the standard for many years. So inherently unsafe is this system that all 50 states require trailers be equipped with safety chains, as a backup to restrain the trailer should it become uncoupled. Safety chains are practically an admission that sooner or later the trailer coupler is going to part company with the ball.

Experienced towers recognize the danger of trying to control an uncoupled trailer on the end of traditional safety chains. If the chains break, the trailer is free to go after anyone or anything in it's path. If the chains do not break, the lives of the driver and passengers of the towing vehicle may be at risk, as the trailer swings wildly from side to side, ramming the back of the towing vehicle or eventually digging its tongue into the ground and flipping over, sometimes with very serious consequences.

Because safety chains represent such a nuisance to the novice tower, and because they have such a poor reputation among experienced towers, they are often inadequate to the task. If they are not worn or rusty, then they are too long or too short or else they are hooked up improperly, if they are hooked up at all.

Clearly, a better system for towing is needed, and now it seems, it may have arrived. Ames International, Inc. has patented and is manufacturing a device called Safety Tow, which can prevent the vast majority of accidental trailer separations. Instead of attempting to control a loose trailer after the fact of decoupling, Safety Tow keeps the coupler from ever coming off the ball in the first place. Safety Tow attaches to the underside of the trailer tongue, beneath the coupler.

Operation is very simple. A metal plate rides horizontally just beneath the shank of the hitch ball. Should the coupler try to lift off the ball for any reason ­­ worn coupler, failure to secure latch properly, incorrect size of towing ball ­­ the lower plate contacts the bottom of the ball shank and prevents the coupler from lifting high enough to clear the ball. So effective is this system, so simple, inexpensive, and easy to use, that Penske Truck Leasing Co. is installing Safety Tow on the car carriers they rent to the public.

Legislation providing for a device other than safety chains last month floated through both houses of the Oklahoma legislature, after legislators at the state capitol building were treated to a demonstration of Safety Tow's benefits. The legislation provides for: "a safety device other than chains or cables which provides strength, security of attachment and directional stability equal to or greater than that provided by safety chains and which prevent parting from the drawing vehicle should the regular coupling device break or otherwise become disengaged. This device shall be designed, constructed, and installed so that if the tow-bar fails or becomes disconnected, the tow-bar will not drop to the ground." Safety Tow meets that criteria. Most safety chains in use today do not.

Details on the installation and operation of Safety Tow may be found at their web site, www.pldi.net/~amesst .

Safety Tow can surely prevent some very costly accidents; it may even save some lives.

For more information about Safety Tow, contact John Sheffield, Ames International, Inc., 104 E. Corporate Dr., Ames, OK 73718. Phone 580-753-4600 or 888-247-3093.

RVN

Follow this link for more new products