09
Mar
Safe towing mostly depends on a good match of a caravan and car. However, many other factors come into play as well, such as how you load your caravan and car as well as the driving and maintenance of the outfit. Even with the perfect outfit, there’s still a chance that an unexpected pothole, a sudden side wind or the passing of a high-sided vehicle could cause momentary instability. And this is where caravan stabilisers come into play.
Using caravan stabilisers is always advisable, but not as a means of resolving the problems of a badly loaded caravan or a poorly matched outfit, but instead, it should be regarded as an additional safety precaution which will help if things go south. Even the best balanced outfit can sometimes be impacted by external factors that create involuntary movement, which the driver cannot control. It’s precisely in this case when a stabiliser can help.
There are two types of movement that a towed caravan can make. Lateral movement or technically known as “yaw”, which is a movement of the caravan from side to side relative to the car. This can either be a minor inconvenience or a serious condition which if left unchecked, can lead to the dangerous loss of control, also called snaking.
The second type of movement is pitching – a vertical movement which often occurs after going over a sudden dip or a pot hole in the road. This isn’t as alarming as it sounds, and will quickly subside when the unit is back on a level surface. However, it makes the driver uncomfortable at the time that it happens.
When looking for caravan stabilisers for sale, there are three types that you’re going to come across – those that are attached to the towball itself, those that use a physical connection between the caravan and the car such as a blade, and the newest electronically assisted systems which use the caravan breaks to keep the unit in line.
The first two depend on some damping down or restriction of the caravan’s lateral movement to prevent instability developing into something far more serious and said to increase the critical speed at which instability can occur. The electronically assisted stabilising systems work in a different way by operating the brakes to pull the outfit into line once a certain level of instability has been detected.
The more stable the caravan is, the less likely it is that a stabilising device will be needed. There are a couple more caravan stabilisers for sale on the market, but the aforementioned three are the most commonly used ones.
