Car and Truck Pacific Highway

Hope the 4WD driver towing the van doesn't think he has a case because he was hit from behind.  Looks wet, but the van towing driver got his intersection approach all wrong.

According to the story he hit an oil slick, the abs kicked in and he still couldn't stop it.
To jack knife it that bad I'd say the caravans brakes were either not working or not setup correctly, he was approaching too fast considering the road conditions especially with a 2.5t+ caravan behind him

The caravan driver who identified himself as 'Brad' posted on the LiveLeak website. "As I approached the intersection I was braking as per the conditions of the road and was successfully braking. At about the last 50 to 30 metres the car started to slide and the ABS started operating and was doing nothing to slow the slide," 
"I had two choices: enter the intersection travelling straight or try to turn left to avoid crossing the intersection. I decided to turn left. This caused a jack-knife of the car and van.

"Now I don't know if that was the right decision or not. BUT if the van hadn't have jack knifed we would have been hit right at the drivers door. I will leave the rest to your vivid imagination ..."

Brad's daughter Leisa Chaisty told the Triple M Grill Team “My father did all he could to prevent any fatalities and received praise for his actions for thinking quickly enough to turn the vehicles slightly left instead of head on into the truck in the video.

"People need to ask themselves what they would do in a situation like this if they only had seconds to react.

"My father is an experienced driver especially when it comes to towing large vehicles as he's been a heavy rigid truck driver for over 10 years.”

Now being a driver of a heavy rigid truck for over 10 years doesn't give you the experience in towing articulated loads

Bloody ABS and towing a heavy van can go very wrong in slippery conditions.

I had trouble stopping once on sandy gravel, towing a large-ish van with electric brakes (Dual axle 17 foot full size offroad van with 4 wheel electric brakes, towed by an 80 series cruiser with ABS). Was out west of Alice Springs - returning from Kings Canyon into Alice via the "back way".

The way some of the electric van brakes are designed to work is through that little electric brake controller in the car. It detects when the car is braking via a pendulum that swings forwards and tells the van brakes to come on a certain amount. The theory is the more you brake in the car, the further the pendulum will swing forward and apply more braking to the van brakes. You adjust and test the pendulum/brakes on a level road before you set off - which I had done and they worked fine - on the tar.

What happened with me on the gravel was I hit the brakes hard (because a big washout was coming up and I was going too quick for the conditions). The ABS kicked in and stopped the car brakes from kicking in, so the pendulum hardly moved only applying light braking to the van - which in turn pushed the car along.

End result I stood on the brakes as hard as I could - and hung on for life!!! Fortunately no real damage to the car, van or anyone.  I thought about what happened after I bounced through the second washout, so when I got to the third, used the brake override lever on the electric brake controller to force the van brakes on. The 4 van wheels locked up - but so what! It was sandy gravel, and this worked a treat digging in and helping the car to slow and the ABS hardly kicked in.

Trap for new towers!

If the cock towing the van wasn't doing 60k when they hit I'll be f&^! €d.
I don't reckon he'd pull up in the dry.

I agree go`n to quick,

or a newly retired grey nomad, that's just spent all his dosh on a new kit, and has never towed before, which is a very common thing.

it makes me sick to watch that, and why I say that is, I have two trades behind me, that being    

1: a "coach and motor body builder"    

2: "boilermaker"

Now, when I was a coach builder, in the mid to late 80`s, there was a major head on with two buses outside Grafton, and it was brought to our manufacturer to appraise to either fix, or write off. It was sickening to look at, as a lot of people died in this crash, and the wankers who brought the buses to us, hadn`t cleaned the rotting flesh off the buses, and if I ever see a major accident, or that kind of scene, it takes me back to that moment, and smell, and sickens me.

2wheelsagain wrote:If the cock towing the van wasn't doing 60k when they hit I'll be f&^! €d.
I don't reckon he'd pull up in the dry.

Agreed

madmax wrote:

2wheelsagain wrote:If the cock towing the van wasn't doing 60k when they hit I'll be f&^! €d.
I don't reckon he'd pull up in the dry.

Agreed

Ditto.

I would imagine that that intersection is a compulsory STOP sign one. That dude was trying to entre the main highway without stopping fully but then saw the truck at the last second. Then it was too late.

if you can place yourself on your bike in place of the truck, what would be your course of action?
I think I'd open up the throttle bigtime and not cross the centreline to meet that oncoming car.

Yes I think you would sneak through on a bike ok.  A scarier situation would be if you were behind the truck waiting to pass.  Oh Boy !

Yes with a bike he would not have jack-knifed the van - he would have come straight onto the highway in front of you without slowing down at all. 

Cripes he couldn't see the 18-wheeler there's no chance a bike would have registered.

As a few of you know, Im a truck driver. I could write a thesis on why Grandpa Joe shouldn't be allowed to walk into Jayco and instantly become a 15m long articulated vehicle, probably without so much as taking a 6x4 to the tip in his life. But if I start I might not stop.
The shit I put up with daily would astound you, its frightening, and I don't do long haul.
As for old mate in the video, way too fast on his approach, greasy road, heavy load on shitty brakes. Absolutly no excuse at all, he was going too fast. Bet he doesn't do it again.
Hope the truck driver is OK physically and mentally.