Towing Older VW Beetle

mowermech wrote:


ALL states, AFAIK, have a Braking Performance Law. So does the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). If you can not stop your rig within the parameters of the law, you must have an auxiliary braking system. If you can stop within the parameters, you do not need the braking system. I do not know of any state that requires auxiliary braking on a towed motor vehicle. Trailers, yes, above a certain weight (that weight may be GVWR or the actual trailer weight). In many states, a motor vehicle designed to carry passengers is not legally a trailer. Check the legal definitions for your state.
I do not know of any third party testing having been done on aux. braking systems. No CR, UL, Good Housekeeping, none.
The law, of course does not address morality or physics. It only addresses safety.
Do your own research. Good luck.

How can a law address safety without taking physics into account?
When you increase weight without changing the braking laws of physics means you will increase time/distance needed to stop from the same speed. I think that might be a safety issue, no matter what the law says.
I know RVs are often exempt from laws that apply to CMVs, and even the laws that do apply are unlikely to be enforced. On CMVs, any axle that does not have working brakes is not counted as a load carrying axle. A guy I worked with loaded his short end-dump to what was legal to bridge, then hooked up his TT. He did not know the fuse to the brake controller mounted on TT was blown. With brakes on the TT, good at 80,000. Same axles on long trailer, good at 80. He was grossing about 77,000 and not counting the TT was legal for 70,000. $635.00 plus court cost.
The brake system for any vehicle, including MH, is designed to stop the GVWR of that vehicle, with a reserve for safety. If when you hang a toad on it, the GCVW is more than GVWR you are riding in that reserve.