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Overtaking with a boat on tow?
(lemmy.wtf)
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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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Interesting; my understanding is that this happens when there’s insufficient tongue weight and can be resolved by engaging trailer brakes or accelerating gently.
But this just looks like the tow vehicle might not have been up to the job.
It’s because they suddenly switched from going downhill to going uphill, and didn’t correct their driving to account for that. Going downhill, they were likely accelerating to get past the traffic. So the boat was actually being pulled downhill. Then when the slope began to change, they stopped accelerating because they were past the traffic.
This means the boat’s inertia was suddenly pushing the car, rather than being pulled by it. If they had continued accelerating up the hill, (and thus, kept pulling the boat) they would have been fine. But since they were starting to slow down, (and the boat was pushing them from behind) they essentially got PIT maneuvered as soon as the back end wasn’t perfectly straight.
Either way, the correct solution would have been to accelerate. But inexperienced trailer drivers often panic and brake as soon as a wobble starts, which only makes it worse. Imagine the trailer being held by a rope instead of a ball hitch. You’d want to keep tension on that rope constantly, so it doesn’t go slack. Because if you put slack in that rope, the trailer will try to veer off in one direction or the other, and you’ll be along for the ride. That’s essentially what happened here. They went from pulling the trailer to being pushed by the trailer.
The swerving starts in the middle of the downhill portion. By the time they start going up hill it looks very out of control.
With that said, I think the principles of your comment are true and I could see a case where they felt the first wiggle going downhill and brake causing the crash.
Actually the reason it starts to swerve is because the boat trailer is moving faster than the tow vehicle; at least that is the impression I get by the fact the boat tires are turning faster than the tow vehicles (swervy line longer than straight).
Personally I think had they applied a little trailer brake (not truck brake) going down the hill, it wouldn't have been able to fishtail like that. Probably shouldn't go off what a random internet stranger says, but while I've had a couple trailers get squirrelly in my life, none have done that.
During my youth I was working at a mobile fast food stand
Once we needed to take the highway to jump in on a job and my boss just jokingly told me to look into the mirror
The fucking fast food trailer was jumping a meter to each side
He was having quite some fun provoking it by accelerating, because it started around a specific speed
So in that case it was probably an aerodynamic issue - at least it seemed like that
We weren't going downhill or uphill, and the only difference was our speed when the jumping started
I believe U-Haul has demo videos on exactly this
It sucks to learn a lesson this way when they could have learned it by reading any of the paperwork that came with each component, or watching a video about it, or not ignoring all the various people who have already likely tried to explain it in person.
At worst, the slowest of those methods of learning the lesson would have been an hour or less of their time. This way is gonna cost hundreds or thousands of hours. And worse, could have cost forever, or someone else's forever, or multiple.
Motorcycle wobble can be resolved in two ways:
Slowing down: this makes the wobbles frequency slower but bigger (til it disappears)
Speeding up 😱: wobble frequency gets faster so actually more stable. Gotta have the HP to do so though.
Here it feels like it's just uneven loading or just not made for those speeds.
You think? this cretin is passing not one but TWO cars at high speed, uphill, towing a boat! might is below understatement.
Uphill? This looks a lot like downhill to me