mosseater wrote:
I read through the entire post. There's a lot of doubters, a lot of specualtion. What I didn't see until the previous post was anybody who had seen or dealt with real sway. Not being blown around or pulled by road joints, or even emergency manuevers. Real sway. I have seen it. And it's ugly.
It won't matter how good your skills are or how big your rig is if it happens. It's the perfect storm, and you're lucky if you end up with the rubber side down. You won't have time to do much thinking. The rig I saw was an F-150 longbed hauling a small (4000 lb?) excavator at about 30 mph. It started gradually and quickly crescendoed to an all-out "S" festival, which had the wheels of the truck and trailer both off the ground almost a foot. It started by itself and ended when it was done. It was clear the driver was along for the ride. Period.
I know most of you will blow this off. That's fine, the choice is yours. All I can say is the anti-sway systems on the road will hopefully allow a margin of control to exist which might allow you to regain the composure of your rig if it ever happens. Whatever else a WD/anti-sway system might or might no do safety-wise, I can't really say. I haven't seen credible testing that absulutely puts the issue to rest. I can say that what most people think is "sway"....isn't. If you ever get a chance to see it or experience it, you will be astounded. It almost seems supernatural to observe.
First of all with all due respect NOTHING happens in a vacumn. That sway was INDUCED by some force acting on the trailer or TV or both. Most likely, in the absence of any other obvious sources, it was driver induced.
The trailer and load you describe are problematic and often loaded incorrectly. Or possibly OVERLOADED.
Once the sway begins if the driver slows, the sway motion will increase. If it gets to the point you describe it is VERY difficult to recover. The forces involved tend to reach a point of Harmonic Oscillation which will continue to increase until it is interrupted by other forces.
But no matter what. There was a PHYSICAL reason for this,it did not happen "all by itself" and My bet is that if investigated carefully it would be found that it was a result of improper loading and driver input.
It is scary to see but I am not sure that is a reason to be sold on a sway bar system. NOTHING can replace learning to LOAD it and DRIVE it properly.
