Towing wreck - overloaded hitch

GeoBoy wrote:
The bottom line is that a person lost their life, children were injured and will never spend another day with their father!!
Why, it appears that the trailer builder didn't include brakes or safety chains and the person towing the trailer appeared to be negligent.
The driver, trailer builder and owner of the trailer should go to jail!

The requirement for trailer brakes varies from state to state. One can buy a trailer in one state where it is a requirement above say 3500 lbs, go into there state where it is say 1000 lbs, and tow something. So is this really the trailer manufactures issue on something like this?

Safety chains depending upon the design, how installed, could also be removed by the owner buyer for what ever reason. Again, should the trailer manufacture be liable for the owner/operator of the trailers negligence in an issue like this?

"IF" the trailer builder is a corporation, you will not be able to get the "owner(s)" to go to jail, as they are protected a majority of the time for issues like this, same with employee's. The only thing you can get from them is money in a civil suit. The jail time has to come from a legal suit, and legal will not usually go after a manufacture. And even then, since there is more than one building and designing the trailer, hard to pin point the % of who is really at fault. See some of BenK's posts in regard to the suits he has had to deal with.

Then you have the trailer hitch manufacture, as one of my hitches says, 5000 lbs limit, EXCEPT as used to tow a mobil home, then it is 15K or 20K lbs of trailer! Probably because it will be a one or two time useage vs potentially daily!

Many ways to answer the original issue, who is at fault etc. Same with the licensing issue, is it the door plate? or the paid for license? or some combo of both?

Marty