Snaking

Although I couldn't find it upon searching the website, I seem to recall the Caravans Clubs' official advice on how to recover from a snake is to slow down, loosen your grip on the steering wheel and (if necessary) apply gentle braking.

This also seems to be the advice of most of those contributing to discussions here.

Well, this July, that is exactly what I did to try & recover from a snake with disasterous results.

The snake started when being passed by two HGVs on a dual carriageway. The snake developed as the second vehicle was about two thirds past us.

I did what I thought were all the correct things as above (having recalled it to be official Caravan Club advice) and it made no difference. The snake just became worse, resulting in the caravan taking control of the car.

The result was a collision with the nearside safety barrier, writing off both the tow car and caravan. Fortunately, the caravan remained upright and none of us in the car were injured. There were no other vehicles involved.

Upon the scene being attended by Traffic Police, the officer dealing told me I should have done exactly the opposite and accelerated. He explained that this has the effect of 'pulling' the caravan and car apart, so the caravan has less weight bearing down on the car and, therefore, less ability to control the vehicle.

It makes sense to me and this advice was also repeated by the driver of the recovery truck who is an experienced tower.

Hopefully, there won't be another such incident, but if I do experience another snake, I'll be accelerating, not slowing.