Bad day...

Alie&Jim's Carrilite · November 17, 2016

Bad day for a young man I know...

https://www.facebook.com/destinyjb/videos/10208577394377092/

Rolled his camper and truck. Started to fish tail and hit the truck brakes instead of accelerating or using trailer brakes alone.

Can speed be determined by the video? This was on I29 just north of the South Dakota/ North Dakota border.

Warning- Adult language in the video!

I'mdonewiththis forum · November 17, 2016

Can speed be determined by the video?

That is a very unfortunate situation to experience. The main thing is that everyone is still breathing!! Anyhow, yes, the speed can be determined by counting the lines separating the lanes for a certain period of time. The dashes are supposed to be fourty feet from the beginning to the beginning of the next one (so I have been informed). I did a little searching and found this:

Each dashed line measures 10 feet, and the empty spaces in-between measure 30 feet. So every time a car passes a new dashed line, the car has traveled 40 feet

Darryl&Rita · November 17, 2016

Little time with a stopwatch and counting the yellow lines he passed, poof, speed. Standard length is 10', with 30' to the next line.

Yarome · November 17, 2016

Glad everyone made it out. By the line count he was traveling at an average speed of 75mph. There was acceleration as he passed so it was probably less than 75 in the beginning and over 75 as the pass was completed.

From what I read there where high winds. The trailer wheels "stalled" on the rumble strip which started to pull them off. An over-correction started the fishtail and applying the truck brakes finished off their rigs.

A combination of driver mistakes, IMO, but all's well that ends well when no one else was involved and everyone walked away from it. The driver is attributing it to the rumble strip and having a full fresh water tank in the rear.

Alie&Jim's Carrilite · November 17, 2016

Add young and inexperienced as well...

Feel sorry for him. He's lucky, that's for sure. His fiance' was behind him. He's ok today, sore and achy, but no damage but some seat belt rash.

lenp · November 17, 2016

Kind of hard to get a good count on the strips but I count 30 in 15 seconds. Do the math and he was under 60 MPH. Wind must have been bad!

lenp

phoenix2013 · November 17, 2016

In 42 years of pulling I experienced this three times, all three times it had to do with with no braking by the trailer. The first one was in my callow youth pulling with a pickup a fifth twice as heavy as the pickup. The crappy electric brake controller quit going down hill at a pretty good clip. Put the brakes on and the fifth started to come around the truck. Had the good sense, even going down hill to hit the gas and go even faster. Once the fifth got behind again I started to just tap the truck brakes to shave the speed down. Used the same technique the other two times although I never again let it get behind as far as the first time. You can certainly feel it coming on (as evidenced by the language in the video), what you do then is what makes a difference.

castlewood57 · November 17, 2016

Yea, winds have been blowing pretty good up here, I am in South Dakota. Something light like a camper makes a great sail.

Hewhoknowslittle · November 18, 2016

Bad day for a young man I know...

https://www.facebook.com/destinyjb/videos/10208577394377092/

Rolled his camper and truck. Started to fish tail and hit the truck brakes instead of accelerating or using trailer brakes alone.

Can speed be determined by the video? This was on I29 just north of the South Dakota/ North Dakota border.

Warning- Adult language in the video!

Yes, some foul language, but who wouldn't us the term in the same case.

wish his companion had a dash cam to get the complete picture.

Roger

VegasFlyer · November 19, 2016

Despite your best efforts, you can not conclusively determine an accident timeline and cause strictly from a forward facing video, there are too many factors that would have effected that crash.

The one thing that can be definitively said is that it was a crash, not an accident.

oletimer · November 19, 2016

If he walked away alive and unhurt, I would call this a GOOD DAY!

Dick T

Alie&Jim's Carrilite · November 20, 2016

Despite your best efforts, you can not conclusively determine an accident timeline and cause strictly from a forward facing video, there are too many factors that would have effected that crash.

The one thing that can be definitively said is that it was a crash, not an accident.

His girlfriend was following. Her statement to me was that when he changed lanes to pass, the trailer started rocking then. As he continued to pass, the rocking became sway.

Knowing the road and conditions, I had passed thru the same area about 3 hours earlier, the lanes are grooved from the heavy truck wear and it was 10-15mph winds coming from 10 o'clock. Even in our truck, I can tell when I moved out of the groove and the wind was pushing us. What I'm thinking happened was that as he moved to pass, that upset the balance, water sloshing etc, and then a different wind hit him. The buffeting from the truck being passed continued to make the trailer unstable. When the trailer passed the front wind that the truck was pushing, it was enough to cause it to become uncontrollable. Add an inexperienced driver, no sway control- he had equalizer bars, and bad winds to begin with and he lost it.

Yea he was lucky to have a sore back and some bruises.

pugsly · November 20, 2016

I had this happen to me in Montana earlier this year as I was being passed. bumper-towed travel trailer passed me, eased up on the throttle and started fishtailing until they rolled right in front of me. Had to brake hard to to be part of the accident.

Fortunately everyone was okay.