Undertaking on Motorway... 183

Let's look at some of those claims ...

How many of those had dodgy tyres? I suspect very few and the media has lumped tyres and lights together for sensationalism.

If you'd stopped 643 solo cars, I'll bet that you'd find more than 17 that had dodgy tyres or lights. FWIW, I drove down the A39 yesterday in near pea-soup fog and there was so many cars with one headlight out. I made a joke about it and my pbuttenger counted the number in the next 100 cars. There were 7 cars in that next 100 that had one headlight out - so in 643 cars, that would be 45 solo cars with dodgy tyres-lights.

Now, the article doesn't say how many were stopped and what criteria the authorities were using to select who to stop. I strongly suspect that they only pulled outfits that looked dodgy. For example, those towing nose down are the most likely to have excessive noseweights. Those that you can see lots of stuff through the window are most likely to be overweight. Those with one headlight out are most likely to have dodgy lights. etc...

Didn't have their safety cable attached? Or was it ? ...

... this is quoted from later in the piece. There's been enough similar reports of overzealous numpties who don't know the law trying to take caravans off the road on this point. The law says that you must either (depending on the age of the trailer) have a secondary coupling or an arrangement that will automatically apply the trailer brakes if the trailer decouples. Nearly all those who "did not have their safety cables attached properly" will have looped the cable around the base of the towball and clipped it to itself. This is perfectly legal and normal practice where there is no more suitable method to secure the breakaway cable to the vehicle. This happened again last year in Dorset and (IIRC) it took intervention from an NTTA member before the numpties accepted their error and let one member on his way.

We've seen this before on u.r.c. What method was used to weigh these caravans, and how many of them had twin-axles? Frequently these roadside checks are done by numpties who don't know that you cannot accurately weigh a twin-axle trailer by weighing each road wheel and the jockey wheel in turn, and adding up the individual weights. Even if you use blocks the same height as the load cell to raise the points not being weighed, the suspension system can still "shed" weight between the axles. The other problem with these roadside checking stations is that the ministry usually bring along the same load cells that they use to weigh 40-tonners. AIUI, while these devices are relatively accurate at higher loads, they're not so clever when used to weigh the five or six hundred kilogram load on each wheel of a caravan. An accuracy of +-- 50 kg is almost insignificant when you're weighing 40 tonnes, but very significant when the error can exceed half your payload!

So, 250 kg is over 30 percent of the MTPLM of the caravan. Therefore, the MTPLM of that trailer is no more than 750kg and it's likely that caravan was a two-birth. Most caravans have a payload of over 200 kg. So, there was over 450 kg of personal effects and habitation equipment in a compact two-birth? Have you any idea what sort of volume that would take? It's completely laughable and places strong suspicion on the accuracy with which the weighing was done. Note also that this trailer was probably one one of the lightest caravans weighed that day, which brings their load- cell accuracy at lighter loads further into question.

That piece is so obviously sensationalism, hype and spin, and I guess it shows that Conor is not the only one to exaggerate!

-- Geoff