Trooper Says 5er Riders Not Illegal--But Not Safe

A Minnesota State Trooper says that while he doesn't know of any law in his state that prohibits riders in fifth wheels, if he catches you, he'll push for a citation anyway. Trooper Andy Schmidt, writing in the electronic edition of the Detroit Lakes Tribune, says, "In the event of a crash, camper trailers usually do not do very well. They have a tendency to come apart as if a bomb exploded and they offer very little (if any) protection to the occupants."

The fact that there's no specific law of carrying passengers in a fifth wheel doesn't stop Schmidt from taking an 'offending' driver to the dock: "I will push for charges of careless driving as a person should know that camper trailers are not passenger vehicles and therefore the driver is putting the occupants at a greater risk."

We haven't heard of anyone receiving one of Trooper Schmidt's citations; anybody out there got one and contested it?

Can You Weigh Before You Buy?

Here's another one of those "campfire topics" that come up among RVers. How much does your rig weigh? For those of us with fifth wheels, it seems like we can find plenty of places to put "stuff," and if you're a fulltimer, it doesn't take long to stuff, and stuff, and stuff--to the point our rigs look like overloaded thanksgiving turkeys.

Is your rig weight safe for your tow rig? Imagine the chagrin of the fellow whose story was related on an RV forum. After living in a motorhome for some years, he decided he wanted to swap over to a little fifth wheel. OK, little, meaning a 38' fifth wheel. He figured he had a plenty big tow vehicle--a one ton pickup with a 18,000 pound rated fifth wheel hitch. Having made his transaction with the dealer, transferred his possessions from the motorhome to the fifth wheel, then showed up to pull his new fiver home--and the dealer refused to let him tow it off the lot. Seems the dry weight of the new fiver was 17,000 pounds, and worried about liability issues, the dealer saw to it the trailer was towed to the buyer's home.

Every truck manufacturer sets a towing weight limit for their trucks. Go over the limit, what can happen? Truck systems, meaning engine, braking, and frame all figure into the picture. Too much weight puts too much stress on those systems. Get in an accident with an "overload" condition and you may well find out your insurance company isn't standing behind you.

Here's a tip from the Recreation Vehicle Safety Education Foundation: Weigh it before you buy it. Yes, new rigs are supposed to be equipped with a sticker that shows the weight of the rig and information on the total allowable rig weight, sadly that sticker can be "off" considerably when options are added. Ask the dealer to have the rig towed to a public scale and weighed in. THEN take into account how much "stuff" you're thinking about adding. The foundation also provides a few statistics on some things we all have to carry:

Water scales in at 8.3 pounds per gallon. Gasoline 5.6 pounds. Diesel 6.8. Propane 4.2.

How much stuff will you "stuff" in your rig? The foundation says their experience says the average RVer adds about 2,000 pounds of personal baggage. For us fulltimers, we'll typically tip the scales at 3,000 pounds. After moving "stuff" out of our fifth wheel into our new trailer, we'd have to say hard as it is to believe, that 3,000 pound estimate is probably pretty close.

Keep it to the limit. Keep it safe.

photo (in part) mandj98 on flickr.com

Do Ya Buckle Up That Pickup Truck?

For fifth-wheeling RVers, a pickup truck is the essential vehicle for RV travel. Most of us fiver-owners pride ourselves on driving safety--but how about personal safety in the truck? Most folks agree that wearing seat belts can reduce injury and death in vehicle crashes, but what do their actions say?

It seems like pickup drivers and riders have a little bit looser attitude about belting up--at least in Ohio. Researchers from the Miami University Applied Research Center say that while they found roughly 84% of folks in the front seats of cars, minivans, and SUVs used seat belts, at the same time only 71% of front seat occupants in pickups used theirs. While the reasons for the disparity weren't commented on, it is interesting to note that Ohio doesn't have a "primary" seat belt law--meaning law enforcement can't stop drivers and cite them simply because they see seat belts aren't in use.

Sadly, those same sort of statistics seem to work out on a national level. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says 70 percent of those killed in pickup truck crashes in 2003 did not wear safety belts, compared to 50 percent of the fatalities in cars. At the same time, statistics show seat belts reduce the risk of death by 45 percent in passenger cars and up to 60 percent in pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans.

Yes, we've heard the 'campfire argument' that, "A seatbelt can jam and trap you in a burning car, or drowning when you go off the road into water!" The NTSB looked into that, too. Only one-half of one percent of all crashes ends in fire or submersion. Most crash fatalities result from the force of impact or from being thrown from the vehicle, not from being trapped. Ejected occupants are four times as likely to be killed as those who remain inside the vehicle. Notwithstanding, if you're not wearing a seat belt and your rig tumbles off the road, or gets into a hairy crash, you're head is likely to hit something, knocking you out. Try and get out of a burning or flooded vehicle when you're "out cold." You don't stand a chance.

Yeah, we'll probably get a lot of reaction from this posting--and it won't all be pretty. But if just one more RVer buckles up after reading this, it's worth a lot of static.