The previous summer, on our way out to Colorado from south Florida, in Baton Rouge, we were at the site next to a 5th wheel, with the truck bed smashed down. In talking with the owner, he said he had owned the trailer and truck for about 6 years, used it for him and his wife to follow the dog shows with their pooches. (4 of them) Normally they were on the road for about 8 to 12 weeks at a time, so lots of experience with the trailer and truck. Then two days before I was talking to him, he got distracted somehow, thought he had done it all correctly and pulled out only to quickly realize he hadn't. Dropped trailer.
He came over and admired the Blue Ox hitch catcher I had installed on my hitch and said when he got home he was going to install one on his hitch.
As I have been a licensed pilot for 46 years, to me it is "familiarity" that creates the problems. Put me in a plane that I am flying several times a week, the same plane, and I can tell you that sooner or later, I will miss something on the check list. The standard joke about pilots that fly retractable gear planes are those that have landed gear up and those that are going to land gear up. So far I am still in the in between group of those pilots. LOL
So I learned a long time ago, not to say "my kid would never do that" or my dog would never do that, or I would never do that, etc. because under the "right" circumstances, anything can happen and most likely will happen. The less a person travels with a 5th wheel trailer, probably they are more observant and check more. When it just becomes second nature to you to do something, watch out, because like the dog person mentioned above, you may just drop your rig or wreck some other type vehicle.
My father in law, a finishing carpenter, most of his adult life, managed to saw his thumb off at the first joint, with a radial arm saw, at the age of 65. A saw he had used thousands of times in the past, but he got distracted that one time and that was enough to cause the accident.
This past summer, I saw a new version of this in a campground at Mount Rushmore. At the site across the road from us was a very nice 5th wheel, probably a 36 or 38 ft unit, one of the higher end ones, probably 4 or 5 yars of age being towed by a new Dodge dually diesel extend cab.
Don't know what happened by the guy came steaming out of his trailer, got in his truck and pull out of the CG is a big hurry. In about half an hour he came back into the CG in the same manner. He pulled up past the trailer and at a rapid rate backed up to the front of the trailer as if he were planning to hitch up. However he didn't lower his tail gate or get stopped in time and slammed his tail gate into the 5er hitch pin. It made a terrible noise, pushed the 5th wheel back about a foot. The guy just sat behind the wheel for about a minute or so as he knew what he had done. I was about to go check on him to see if he was OK but he soon slowly got out, walked about the front of his truck to the back, stopped to look at his V shaped tailgate, shook his head and went into the trailer. I walked over to take a look and his pin box had sliced a hole in the tailgate as well as bending it forward about a foot. After a while he came out of the trailer, pulled forward, with an axe was able to get his tailgate open and down, then loaded his trailer and departed, at a nice slow speed from the camp ground.