Is this unsafe to do this?

BroncosFan wrote:
horton333,in Ontario,
what do you mean by not legal. The owner in the first photo is in BC Canada and his RV trailer manufacturer, in BC, told him to do it this way. I would not do it this way. Thanks.

Ontario regulation requires a 'separate attachment point' for the cable. Dealers say lots of things, if they recommended this I would explain how useless that is and then not trust them on much if anything else. That's just my opinion of course.

mowermech wrote:
Technically, the breakaway cable should be attached to the frame of the towing vehicle, not the receiver hitch. there have been instances where the receiver hitch attachment failed, allowing the receiver to depart from the towing vehicle. With the cable attached as pictured, the emergency brake would never actuate in such a scenario.
Realistically, I don't know anybody who does not attach the cable to the receiver.
Including myself.
I think the pictured attachment is entirely adequate.
The length of the cable is another discussion topic, which I won't touch at this time...

Well my Van has a towing bumper with safety chain loops and that's where I attach my breakaway cable so now you know at least one and I've read of several others that do something similar to what I do.

Larry

IF you are OK with attaching cable to hitch than the setup is fine. Nevertheless the cable should be attached to anything other than the hitch to be effective.

horton333,in Ontario,
what do you mean by not legal. The owner in the first photo is in BC Canada and his RV trailer manufacturer, in BC, told him to do it this way. I would not do it this way. Thanks.

valhalla360 wrote:

......
It's a nice theory that it should attach elsewhere but hitches don't fall off very often and most vehicles, even those with factory tow packages don't have a good alternative location to attach it.

Sure it doesn't happen often, but it does happen and it's a big problem when it does and following this way of thinking why bother having this 'last line of defense' at all if you defeat it's purpose cause you don't take the 5 minutes to find a proper mounting point. The force required to pull the link is trivial, all you require is a small bolt or even a decent sized screw with a clip attached.

As others have said, kind of an odd way of doing it but it should work fine. Doesn't look like it should bind and trigger accidentally.

It's a nice theory that it should attach elsewhere but hitches don't fall off very often and most vehicles, even those with factory tow packages don't have a good alternative location to attach it.

fj12ryder wrote:
Not the way I would do it, but doesn't look particularly unsafe.

Not legal in these here parts either. The whole purpose of the safety cable is to limit to problems from a catastrophic hitch where the trailer separates, there are several scenarios here where the brake would no be actuated and the trailer would be separate from the TV and..... well pity the other people on that road. The cable needs to be connected to a separate piece of the TV, not the hitch in general and esp not the pin, for safety.

Not the way I would do it, but doesn't look particularly unsafe.

Yes! It should be fastened to a seperate part of the truck, anything other than the hitch! You don't want it to get hung up on something and accidentally pull the pin and have the hitch pin come out.

Technically, the breakaway cable should be attached to the frame of the towing vehicle, not the receiver hitch. there have been instances where the receiver hitch attachment failed, allowing the receiver to depart from the towing vehicle. With the cable attached as pictured, the emergency brake would never actuate in such a scenario.
Realistically, I don't know anybody who does not attach the cable to the receiver.
Including myself.
I think the pictured attachment is entirely adequate.
The length of the cable is another discussion topic, which I won't touch at this time...