Live from the Caravan, Camping and Motorhome Show

The CMC stand did not seem so popular but CCC were busy but we manage  to find a seat to sit and drink our free coffee

On Thursday's Today at the Caravan Show we watched a Club instructor show a new caravanner how to attach the emergency braking cable by hooking the wire round the towbar. We were horrified. Now thousands of people new to caravanning think that this is acceptable  practice. It is most definitely not!!! 

Strange thing is Mortimer I have just posted this very subject his on the CCC forum,because I thought the instructor was correct looping the cable around and clipping it back on itself if it is a "Snap Lock"type clip.If you have a fixing point you have to use a caribiner type clip instead.

 It may of helped if the instructor had coupled up first,but that is another issue.

Here’s the club's advice -

https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/advice-and-training/technical-advice/breakaway-cables/

 When you think about it, it's the safest thing to attach the breakaway cable as early in the hitch up as possible. 

On another point, they did not show the jockey wheel being raised, but hey, the show was meant to be humorous. I could have said a joke but I restrained myself.

 

Colin

Looping around the ball is great until the removable/retracting ball falls off; or if caravan unhitches and loop of cable just flips off the top.

If you look again at the recording, where other than looping the breakaway cable round the hook could that set up have been secured; I can see no dedicated provision?

The arrangement is not ideal, here with the cable being a carabiner type would not require looping back if there had been a fixing eye, but with the particular vehicle used, there appeared there was not.

It can't be decried as "most definitely not" an acceptable practice, here it was the only and still a legal method that could have been adopted.

Pity the CCC fronted someone prepared to appear on TV using a vehicle where the "best practice" could not be demonstrated; the more so given the target audience and the presumed desire to educate, where that audience is unlikely presently to know better.

 It was a fixed tow hook, so issues about not protecting from a detachable don't apply, nor do I buy into any real fear the cable if ever asked to work is going to "jump off", given the hitch drops downwards.

The user and all related content has been Deleted User

I know of two incidents were this has happened one of which  was our neighbour their car was damaged and the caravan was written off  the other was on the motorway luckily the caravan wound up a bank not on the carriageways.  It would appear there is enough thread on the bolts to accommodate one of those brackets to clip the cable to  

Know what, please?

Single mode failures of the van coming off the hook, or were these double failure events, where both the van came off the hook and the cable, still looped onto itself, jumping off the hook?

All those I have directly known and been there to inspect myself, were within the camp site or its access road. All cases involved a unit leaving the site, so relate to short distances since coupling up. Two appeared to be related to going over a site speed hump.

In all, the breakaway cable system had worked and applied the parking brake. The cable system itself post functioning "breaking", typically with one end or other of the cable's fixings, "unfolding".