When Boats Attack... TD's Freeway Safety Tip #813

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just a little story that might help remind folks to be careful on the freeway, and/or spend a couple extra minutes preparing for camping trips.

Yesterday, the guys at the office decided to take the day off and go golfing during a special at one of the courses. It was about the hottest day of the year so far, temp in the 90’s humidity in the 90’s. But when you can golf all you want for 27 bucks, you go. After 36 holes, I quit as the heat was getting to me and I was on the verge of seeing elves running around.

On the drive home, I notice a pickup with one of those new super-deluxe oversize camper shells huge pontoon boat in the right hand lane of the two lane strip. I’m admiring the boat as I’m zipping by and as I’m passing by the front of the boat, I notice out of the corner of my eye, a large piece of metal sticking out towards my car. I’m thinking “what a goofy looking downrigger… why would anyone have a downrigger that big… why would anyone have a downrigger in this area… oh well, it’s his boat… wait a sec… that wasn’t there a second ago… was it?.. Man, must be the heat”.

Badoomp!

The back of my car jumps up and over a little. “Aw shit, what did I hit”?

My side mirror shows something metallic bouncing into the ditch. Knowing that nobody was behind me, I slow down a bit to eye the gauges a bit and to get a feel for if I have a flat or something which wouldn’t be too much fun on a downhill. Just as I decide that all is well and I don’t need to pull over to the shoulder, I look up and see in my rear view mirror that the pontoon boat is now in my lane, closing the distance to my ass!

I jump on it and zip in front of the truck, not believing what I’m seeing in the mirrors. I noted with twisted humor, the exact moment when the driver of the truck, who is braking a bit on the downhill, looked out his window and saw his boat passing him.

(New truck and camper, $60,000. New Bass Tracker Pontoon boat, $15,000. Losing a drag race on land to your boat, Priceless).

Priceless was the look on his face… it was just shy of exquisite. He starts pulling over and I watch as the boat and trailer combo gradually drifts to the shoulder, hitting an overpass guardrail and “Kaploof”. It’s over.

Good news. Nobody is hurt and the road isn’t fouled. My little bitty Eclipse shows nothing out of the ordinary (at a quick glance in the tall grass of the shoulder).

Bad news. His insurance is gonna jump up a bit. Seems his camper’s bumper with the hitch just kinda broke free of the camper letting the whole schmeal go merrily down the road. (Separation speed was around 60mph). (That was the piece of metal that showed up out of nowhere in the front… the bumper at the moment of separation). In the ditch, the bumper was still hitched and safety chained to the trailer.

When I got home 45 minutes down the road, it dawned on me (still heat fried and coming down from an adrenaline burst) that my car jumped a bit right before it happened. I looked at the side of my car and noticed that my hubcap was gone. A closer look, and further playback of it all revealed that just as I almost passed it, the bumper came loose, the boat tipped backwards a bit, the moter hit the road, and the trailer swung over towards my lane and drove the now free bumper into my rear wheel. What I saw bouncing in the ditch was my hubcap. Hitting me let the trailer straighten out enough that it didn’t just fly into the median.

That’s when it hit me that if I’d been going a fraction of a second slower or faster, the bumper would have hit anything but the steel wheel, and from the marks on it, punched through any other part of the car, wheelwell or glass and I probably would have been attached to the boat for the whole ride. A lucky day overall.

My point? Especially with the big camping summer holiday coming up, be careful when you are around people towing things like boats, trailers, etc. When they come loose, it happens in an instant. If you are gonna pass em, pass em and don’t dawdle while admiring what it is. The best driver in the world has no control if they lose the hitch. And if you tow a boat, camper, etc. make sure that your vehicle is in good shape to do it. This guy had the best hitch you could buy and enough safety chain to tie down a jet. Didn’t mean dick when the bumper bolts sheared. Although his truck was rated to pull anything on the planet, his camper wasn’t rated for the weight of the boat. Give the whole system a safety check, not just the connection point, and double check your tow ratings on ALL the equipment.

Be safe and be happy :slight_smile:

2

It is truly an unjust world we live in if this does not make it to TV as a commercial.

And thanks for the advice!

3

Several months ago, I was driving a dump truck for a guy that was terrible about not fixing problems the drivers reported and firing anybody that refused to go out with an unsafe truck. He had me go over to a jobsite with a flatbed trailer behind my 12cy dump truck and pick up a dozer that needed to go back to the rental company. I had three problems with this:

  1. The trailer/dozer combo would have been about 14 tons and I am only licensed to drive with a trailer of 5 tons or less.
  2. The hitch on my truck had never been weleded to the frame, only bolted. Three weeks prior, another driver had broken the hitch and lost the same trailer with a backhoe loaded on it. It had been straightened and bolted again, but still not welded.
  3. The trailer/dozer/empty truck weight exceeded the 44,100lb GVWR of the truck itself. Can you say “blown transmission”?

But, I needed the job and was assured that everything would be OK, since I only needed to haul it about 12 miles. I went to the site to get the dozer and the operator loaded it up. I thought he loaded it tongue-heavy but, in his opinion, since he had had a CDL for fourteen years and I’d had one for about two months, I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about. We get it chained down and I nervously creep down the road to the highway.

I get on Interstate 40 and head into Oklahoma City. I almost immediately notice a slight harmonic pitching of the truck and start to worry. The next exit is three miles down the road, so I start to pray and maintain as smooth a track as possible; menawhile the pitching is getting worse. About 500 yards from the off-ramp, I hear a huge “thump” and hear the safety chains break. A quick glance in the mirror confirms my worst fear; the hitch has broken completely loose and the trailer is heading down the road on its own. I refuse to panic and start examinig my options. I can slow down and have 28000 pounds of trailer and bulldozer slam into the back of my truck, probably wrecking my rear axles or I can just maintain my speed and say “To hell with it.”

My conscience defers option two and I look back again; the trailer (a fountain of sparks flying from the hitch) is starting to veer right, toward the ditch. I figure it would be better to just let it go since no one will be hurt. I maintain about twenty feet of separation and ride it out. The tongue finally reaches the edge of the pavement and immediately plows deeply into the soft dirt outside of the shoulder. The trailer tips precariously over to the right but amazingly comes back to rest on its wheels. I stop and get out to see how bad it really is.

The bulldozer is completely undamaged; the chains held. Two tires blew on the trailer when it came back down after nearly tipping over. I call my boss and tell him to get his ass down there before the OHP shows up and drags my ass off to jail for exceeding my Class B CDL and losing a load because of poor judgement in attaching it in the first place. He shows up and we unload the dozer and he drives it along the side of the highway down to the off-ramp where another driver will load it onto our flatbed semi-trailer, which should have been used in the first place. We temporarily abandon the trailer and I high-tail it in his pickup back to the yard so I can leave early for the day, claiming that my nerves were shot and I didn’t think I would be safe driving anymore that day. He follows me in the dump truck.
I quit the next week.

The lesson: no matter what a more experienced driver claims, if it looks unsafe, it probably is.

4

ultra, no sweat. Spreading joy, happiness and helpful tips is what I’m here for. Besides making the girls squeal in delight at my mere presence, that is.

sewalk… A regegade bulldozer?? Now that had to be a sight! I don’t blame ya for quitting. I can imagine the hollow feeling you must have had seeing that creeping up on ya!

Driving home from work Friday, I saw two more boat trailers on the side of the road, with no trucks to be seen. I’m seeing a trend out here.

5

Here’s another tip for you. If you’re going to be hauling a boat, etc. on a regular basis, invest in a Draw Tite hitch(or other brand of the same type). It is actually bolted to the frame of your truck, providing much more security and stability (no ripping off your bumpter, etc.) It also helps with balancing and distributing the load on your truck.

6

I also had a boat attack experience, about 9 years ago.

I was driving down a 2 lane highway on a Sunday afternoon, up a slight incline that was about 1/4 mile long. There were 2 little old ladies in a big Mercury in front of me. Suddenly a Bronco towing a 22 foot motorboat crests the hill from the opposite direction. The trailer was swerving back and forth behind the Bronco, and was actually pulling the rear of the Bronco side to side a bit. I immediately began to pull on to the shoulder, in order to clear the road for the guy in the Bronco, but then it looked as though he sort of had it under control, so I stopped with the passenger side of my car on the shoulder.(important)

Suddenly, the Bronco swings into our lane and then back into his, causing the trailer to whip around and hit the mercury in front of me. The trailer tears off and flies into the ditch, the Bronco starts rolling down it’s lane, and the boat goes airborne over the top of the Mercury, and is lazily spinning through the air toward me. I closed my eyes and held on tightly to the steering wheel. I felt a huge thump, heard a loud crash, and opened my eyes.

The boat had landed on my passenger side, flattening the roof on that side, obliterating the windshield, bowing out the passenger door, and kept going, taking out 2 signs on the side of the road. The police officer said they estimated the Bronco was travelling about 80 mph. I was completely unharmed.

But if I’d kept pulling onto the shoulder…

7

Holy smokes!

I’m glad everyone is safe and sound. I had no idea that boat attacks (and bulldozer) were such commonplace.

Hey August, what happened to the other drivers?

8

The two old ladies didn’t have a scratch on them and the driver of the Bronco was bruised up pretty bad, but no major injuries to any of the drivers.

9

I saw the wreckage of a boat attack once, a pretty funny story…

Me and my sister and my nephew are diving down a five lane highway in florida. We watched this guy with a HUGE boat, much bigger than really ought to be hauled, driving VERY fast down the highway. He passes us, and we think nothing about it. About twenty minutes later, traffic slows down to a standstill. When we finally see the problem, it turns out that the boat had come loose from it’s hitch, and was taking up The Middle Three Lanes Of A Five Lane Highway. This, as you might guess, was what caused the traffic. Lucky for us, we were in the lane second to the end on the left. We managed to maneuver around it, and see about 50 yards down, the driver and a state policeman. The driver of the car is yelling, screaming, and not at all pleased. The state policeman is laughing his head off.

10

You should have to get one. It pisses me off that you don’t. Most people haven’t any more idea how to drive with a trailer than how to perform open heart surgery, but they willingly will hitch up a bigass boat on a ratty old trailer with dry rotted tires and bad(or no)brakes, then drive down the road blithely at 80plus mph and get pissed off when it all goes horribly awry. While these people deserve all they get, the people they share the roads with do not. I’m as anti-new-legislation as you can get, but here’s one time even I gotta say, there oughta be a law.

b.

11

I witnessed a similar incident with a backhoe. The thing is, my Dad was drving the truck, and I was in the car beind him with my Mother driving.
My Dad ran gas lines as a contrator for Gulf States Utilities in Louisiana, and owned his own equipment. He had always built his own trailers, and never had any trouble with them. He had just bought a new backhoe, though, and thought he should shell out the extra bucks and buy a trailer for it for a change.
So, he finishes early one afternoon, and decides to take the new backhoe with him to do some work at the house. We had about eightteen acres of land at the time, and he wanted to even out part of the yard close to the house. He’s driving the truck and towing the backhoe on the new trailer. Me, Mom, and the other kids are in the car, following him home.
We get to a stretch of rough highway, and the trailer starts hopping left and right behind the truck. We all figure out where this is headed, and all four of us kids duck our heads so as not to see the accident when it happens. After a while, nothing has happened, so we look up. At this moment, the trailer hits another bump, and the tongue breaks off. The tongue stays hitched to the truck. The trailer breaks away to the left, and pushes the pickup out of the way to go and crash on the left side of the road. The pickup flips over in the ditch on the right side. Backhoe demolished, truck totalled, and that freaking new trailer smashed to bits.
My Dad got away with out being hurt. That was the only good thing, though. The insurance refused to cover the damage to the equipment since it was not work related. Dad had to close his contractor’s office, and went to work as a mechanic. We had to sell the house, and move back into town.
What was the cause of the accident? Where there should have been a solid piece of steel in the tongue, some yo-yo had welded up a couple of pieces and then ground and painted it so that you couldn’t tell just by looking. The weld broke, and the rough road helped to twist the other side of the tongue in two.

12

Yikes.

I’ve seen a boat parked on a curvy section of a major highway, blocking the lane. It’s really surreal to see a 30-foot powerboat sitting on a mountain highway. At the time I felt bad for the owners; they were out for a fun day at the lake, when POOF, they’re out $40,000 or so. But having read this thread, maybe it was their own darn fault.

The worst I’ve experienced personally is driving a two-lane highway and passing a, well, a house, I guess. It was one of those narrow houses that had been sawed in half and each half was on a trailer. The wheels on the trailer were only about 12" across. As I was passing, one of the wheels decided it was bored with its mundane load-bearing existence, and broke free, and bounced down the road towards me. I remember thinking “Huh, it’s lost a wheel. Interesting” It didn’t occur to me at the time that it might be hazardous. As it happened, it bounced right past my car, missing by inches.

I decided at that point that if this trailer was going to self destruct, I’d rather be in front of it than stuck behind it, so I floored it and got the heck out of there, and don’t know how it worked out for the trailer. I tried some polite “You lost a wheel” hand signals as I went by, but I don’t think they were terribly effective, as one finger looks much like another.

13

Aren’t the safety chains supposed to be connected to the frame of the towing vehicle, rather than the bumper? I believe this is a good illustration of why.

14

Hell yes! Large trailers are DANGEROUS! In the Netherlands, you have to have a trailer license if either the trailer is over 3500 kg’s, or if it exceeds the weight of a car. I don’t have a trailer license. This means I can drive an 800 kg caravan with a 1200 kg car. But I’m NOT allowed to haul a 2000 kg caravan with that same car. And rightly so.

15

Finally, a place where I can tell my story.

When I was about 12 or 13, my family owned a little 14 foot boat with a motor. Anyway, one day my step-dad took just me and my little brother to the lake so we could cruise around. At the end of the day, he puts the boat back on the trailer and off we go to head home. Please take in mind that my step-father had been doing a little drinking on the boat that day, so you can probably see where this story is heading. The lake is only about a mile from the freeway and everything was fine until we got to the on-ramp to get onto the freeway. He takes the turn a little too fast and the next thing we know, the boat trailer has snapped off of the hitch and is passing us on the passenger side. I had only about a second to ponder this before the boat slammed into the passenger side of the car very hard, hard enough to knock the car over onto its driver’s side. After the collision, the boat merrily continued down the road for another 30 feet or so before flipping over onto its back, completely demolishing the boat. Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt. The part I still find amazing to this day is the fact that even though my step-father was visibly intoxicated, he was let go without being charged with anything.

16

I was sitting in the back of a bus in North Wales, by the window, when the bus lurched & there was a grinding noise. I looked up from my book in time to see a back wheel (which seemed as big as I am when it was free of the bus), go bouncing past the window, down the hill (overtaking us easily) and plow into a dry stone wall.

The bus managed to come to a halt before arguing with the ditch (and wall) and we had to hang around for a while while they sent a new bus out - I don’t know what they did about the wheel though.