Having brakes that automatically stop a trailer is a big help while towing, but it doesn’t mean you should let your guard down. Towing a trailer or any sort of heavy weight behind your vehicle affects braking distance. It’s much more difficult to brake than usual. If you want to stay safe on the road while towing, keep these tips in mind:
Road Safety Tips While Towing
Stay Alert and Aware
While towing anything, you need to keep your attention focused on the road and on driving carefully. You can’t allow yourself to get distracted, or you might not engage your vehicle’s brakes at the right time. It’s always best to apply your vehicle’s brakes gently when slowing down or stopping, so keep an eye on your surroundings.
Pro Tips are nuggets of information direct from ASE-certified automobile technicians working with CarParts.com, which may include unique, personal insights based on their years of experience working in the automotive industry. These can help you make more informed decisions about your car.
Pro Tip: Properly operating electric trailer brakes will begin to apply as soon as the brake pedal begins to move so that the trailer begins braking slightly before the vehicle brakes engage. This helps prevent jackknifing on slippery roads.
Keep a Safe Distance from Other Vehicles
Staying away from other vehicles is essential when you’re towing something behind you like a trailer. There needs to be enough stopping distance between your vehicle and the one in front of you. This is especially important if the vehicle in front needs to stop suddenly. Sticking too close will mean bumping into the vehicle in front of you if it halts out of nowhere. Avoid panic stops as much as possible and leave as much room as possible between your vehicle and the vehicle in front of you.
Avoid Going Too Fast
The best way to remain in control of your vehicle while you’re towing something is to slow down. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get where you’re going. Towing a trailer or a boat means you have anywhere between a few hundred to a thousand pounds of weight at your back. The last thing you want is to speed down the highway with all that.
If you’re towing with a manual transmission vehicle, you can try downshifting before applying the brakes as well. This’ll ease the brakes into the stop, preventing them from failing or overheating.
Regularly Inspect Your Vehicle’s Brakes
You never want your brakes to fail, and it only gets worse if they fail while you’re towing a trailer. Regularly inspect and service your vehicle’s brakes when towing. Have a mechanic change or repair any inoperative parts once you see they’re wearing down. Keep a regular maintenance schedule, and you should be able to avoid bad brake failure at the worst times.
Install a Breakaway System
Automatic trailer brakes are nothing new, and if you’re regularly towing a trailer or cargo, you might want to consider installing a breakaway system. These are brakes that automatically stop a trailer if it breaks away. If the safety chains or the ball mount keeping your trailer linked to your vehicle break, a charged breakaway system can engage the brakes on the trailer or cargo carrier. The system relies on electric brakes to keep your trailer or cargo carried from rolling into a ditch or, worse, into other vehicles.
Why Is Braking While Towing Difficult?
Braking while towing can be more difficult than you’d expect. It’s certainly much harder than braking in everyday traffic. You can blame inertia for the added difficulty. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest. An object with more mass tends to resist change more than one with less mass. This applies to towing. If your vehicle has a trailer attached to it, it’s carrying more mass, and that mass will resist slowing down, preferring to stay in motion. As a result, it takes longer to stop, and you travel farther before stopping, meaning the stopping distance is longer.
Braking while towing can be a tricky skill to master, but it’s relatively easy to remember the tips for success. Simply stay alert, keep a safe distance from other vehicles on the road, and drive slowly. Sticking to your vehicle’s maintenance schedule and installing a breakaway system won’t hurt either. Now all that’s left is picking where to go and what to tow on your next vacation.
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