Police are reminding people not to overload their vehicles after attending a nasty accident on Victoria’s Hamilton Highway this morning.
The crash happened near Inverleigh when police say the van jack-knifed ‘due to overloading’.
Reports say the caravan narrowly missed being in collision with an oncoming truck.
Happily, there were no injuries … although police say there was a ‘very upset van owner’.
Pictures show that the caravan was pretty much destroyed in the terrifying incident.
Unfortunately it is possible the comment, by VPOL re overloading. will give an out for the insurance company
Such a common thing thete should be more police checking caravans for everything
Was the police comment a guess or did they weigh it 🙂
Glad all were ok.
Must’ve been a while ago huh. Or the cops are just assuming it was ‘due to overloading’ as I think it would take a while to pick up everything and weigh it.
It was the other morning. happened in front of a friend of mine. Like all trailers, vans, horse floats, there is a load capacity written on it. Its not hard to work out if it is more than that, but yes, in the absence of running it over a weighbridge, there is some guessing involved.
How does overloading cause jack-knifing? I’d understand incorrect loading or driver error, but not simply overloading???
Agree.
Jurgens vans would be hard to overload as they are a much lighter vane than most. More likely poorly loaded or simply the driver didn’t know how to save it with the emergency electric brake. I’m glad they weren’t injured.
Notice the broken “C” channel where the tow hitch used to be.. that’s a concern..
Probably not a bad thing to have a sacrificial weak point in the A frame. Might stop the van flipping the tow vehicle.
I read an article on Oz Glide site, Police in Capella QLD, between Emerald and Charters Towers, were conducting RBT and checking weights, they weighed 72 caravans and motor homes and found 65 were over.
I live in Capella and haven’t heard of this one. But I’ve seen alot of overweight vans.
Weigh them all yourself eh Jess? Wish I had the ability to do that by just seeing them and without scales 🙂
That was Capalaba, Redland Bay area in Qld at the end of April
Thanks
It was yesterday I was one of the truckies first there,didn’t look overload to size of 4×4 as wasn’t a massive van,problem was a strong cross wind and marks on road has caused the caravan to swing around and go over, they very very shacken but so happy they were ok
Post the Evidence, showing the van was overloaded.
Post the actual facts of what happened, not speculations.
Of note is that there has been no mention of the tow vehicle.
Looking at the photo I would conclude that the draw bar had broken while under tow. Therefore, it would not have been overloading that caused the accident.
I agree Murray, This whole article could be classified as “fake news”.
Amazing – according to comments here, the Police would not know if it was overloaded, so they’re guessing, but the majority of people commenting know that they weren’t overloaded and know the cause of the accident. That tells me you are no wiser or smarter than the Police and they were at the scene. were you??
Lots of people are now living in their vans so they have heaps of stuff packed into it. Once upon a time vans were for holidays and only what you needed went along. We live in our van and when at base camp ( a shed) we have all the “extras” in the van then before we head out we take out the “extras” and repack the van for travelling. We also pack for the region and season so we’re not carrying stuff we ain’t gonna use. We have gone to the trouble of weighing items and our van/vehicle so we know what to pack. Its not hard to do and being retired got plenty of time to do it. Just a suggestion you may like to consider. Also when on the road don’t buy stuff unless you are prepared to get rid of something you already got. Some vans look like hoarders own them!
There is clear vision of this incident available. Car veered onto the wrong side of road nearly having head on with truck which avoided the car by driving off road. Driver of car then changed direction quickly to get back on his side of road. Caravan started swaying and lost control and rolled causing draw bar to break.
All comments have their points.To me the real problem is that people don’t fully understand how the weight formula of Van,vehicle and the all up weight work.Why,for instance in NSW,don’t Service NSW,have an education day in towns where there is a NSW Service Sevice centre.People could take their rigs to a selected area and be educated how to distribute their weight instead of finding out the hard way.
Why can’t we each take control of weighing our own van etc.
I have brought a rv in the last 2 months . Been very conish of the weight.
I will have weighted before i start my travels.
Also went and had a lesson in the rv to make sure i was driving right.
I feel i am being responsibly, its a pity more People do not do the same things.