That's sensible. I hate to admit it but the tiered motorcycle licensing is a good idea too. The US has a number of fatalities where someone with little or no experience buys a liter sport bike and makes it about 5 miles before crashing.
I rode a Yamaha Seca 400cc for a while. The bike was designed for the European beginner tier and was very rare in the US because it was 'too small'. It worked for me.
I drove a truck and had the full complement of endorsements, triple trailers, tankers, hazardous materials, and so forth. The basic commercial license required a road test but all the endorsements were written tests. In other words when I picked up my first set of double trailers it was on-the-job training in Los Angeles traffic.
However when I got a job driving a school bus I had to show up with a bus for another road test, plus the written test.
Americans don't have those, your racist attitude stinks :-)
One of my wife's ex students flew into Heathrow Airport and went to hire a car. They refused to hire him anything bigger than 1.4 litre (I think), because he was "too young" (under 25) and therefore couldn't be trusted to drive anything more powerful.
They didn't care when he told them he'd just flown an A380 in from Hong Kong.
Toyota Yaris
It has functional wipers although they are different lengths for the passenger and drivers side which is a pain in the ass. The rear one is also a different length.
I'm always surprised that a car licence allows you to tow a caravan or trailer (*) without having any training or testing to prove that you know how to do so safely - especially how to reverse it. I wouldn't think of towing a trailer until I'd had a lot of training and even more practice at reversing. When we got a caravan when I was young, my dad had to work it out by trial and error, practicing on waste ground where it didn't matter if he didn't reverse in a straight line until he'd mastered the technique.
Thinking of driving manuals when you've only ever driven automatics, here's a story that a friend told me. His dad worked at an airport, for a car-hire company. One day "a brash, over-confident American" (**) turned up to hire a car, Hearing his accent, my mate's dad offered him an automatic, on the assumption that it was less likely that an American would be able to drive a manual than if it had been a European. The punter said he was OK driving a manual. He was shown to a car, which was parked alongside the kerb, with several other cars parked in front and behind it. He got in, revved the engine (he knew that you needed to apply enough throttle to prevent a manual stalling when you let the clutch in) and the car surged forward as he let the clutch in very smartly. It cannoned into the back of the car ahead of him, which in turn rear-ended the car in front of *it*. Before my mate's dad could do anything, the guy put the car into reverse to try and extricate himself from the mess, and he did the same thing to the two cars behind him. Within the space of about ten seconds this guy had written-off five brand new hire cars :-( I presume he forfeited his Collision Damage Waiver, only a minute or so after he'd signed for it :-)
(*) For the benefit of Americans in the thread, in the UK, unlike the USA, the word "trailer" is only used for a low-sided vehicle for transporting goods, and not also a full-height, longer vehicle for living in while you are on holiday - the latter is a "caravan".
(**) The fact that he qualified it with those adjectives implies that he realised that not *all* Americans are like this, despite the grossly-unfair stereotypes. :-)
That has changed in recent times and depending if you held your licence before 1st jan 1997 and the type of weight a trailer is and the combined weight of tow an trailer.
Simply, if you got your licence before you can carry on as before with most normal cars and Caravans, if you got it after htose tiny trailers for moving garden rubbish etc should be ok but for a caravan or a reasonable boat trailer a test will be required. Also drivers over 70 when getting thier renewal may need to check what they can still drive especially those who may wish to tow behind a heavish vehicle like a motorhome.
More detailed explanation here
G.Harman .
NY wrote
True.
I don?t bother with training, with trailers, or welding, or designing and building houses on a bare block of land either.
Easy enough with a trailer or caravan, its obvious what you have to do that?s different with the car alone.
Not quite so obvious with a crash stop from a decent speed on the highway tho.
Does the weight of the trailer relative to the car make that much difference to being able to reverse it? That's a matter of learning the muscle memory and judging degree of counter-steer and the point at which you need to switch from counter-steer to normal steering as the caravan starts to point in the direction you want it to go in. Some people (like my wife) can learn that skill by reading it in a book and practicing it for a day or so, whereas others like me are taught it (*) and *still* haven't even begun to master it (ie remain at the clueless novice stage without making any progress). I reckon to some extent it's a skill you are or aren't born with.
I agree though that relative weight *does* make a difference when it comes to stability and controlling snaking at speed.
I'd have thought by now it would be an absolute prohibition on towing if you passed after a certain date unless or until you have proved that you can reverse the thing, not a graduated permission to tow up to a certain weight. I imagine a small trailer can be harder than a big caravan because it is so short that its axle is very close to the car's back axle so the "gearing" on the steering (ie how much you need to move the car's back end to move the trailer the opposite way) is coarser, and when the trailer is nearly in line with the car its shortness and narrowness means its sides can't be seen in any of the three mirrors to check which way it is pointing and by how much (ie if you want to reverse in a straight line, is the trailer still in line with the car?)
(*) After several lessons, my tutor said "some people can do it, whereas other people's brains are wired differently and they never make any progress". I interpreted this is "you're wasting your money; let me spend my time teaching people who are teachable" ;-) He did an interesting test with me: he took me into the Gents (because it had a big mirror) and put a piece of card horizontally in front of my face just below my eyes at the top of my nose. He then held up his hand somewhere in front of my face so I could only see it as a mirror-image reflection, and asked me to touch his hand. I found this very difficult. "There's your problem" he said, confidently, in a "nuff said - stands to reason, dunnit" Cockney patois.
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You are hereby granted the same discretion as van drivers, you may use your mirrors.
I always found that a trailer that was reasonably large was easier to maneuver but growing up on a farm at least gave me the chance to learn. Really small trailers react much quicker, sometimes too quick and often not being able to see them until they have got out of line is a pain as by then it is hard to correct,though that may be a situation where a sensibly mounted reversing camera could be better than mirrors. Those small trailers that are still allowed are small enough that the user will often find that uncoupling them and maneuvering them by hand is quicker .
A question for caravan users here, do any modern caravans have any cameras fitted that the rear view from the van can seen on a tow vehicles display? It would seem be a sensible option .
I have admit I'm of the age that considered Caravans a bloody nuisance to other road users but now that a lot more people use sensible tow cars and better engineered Caravans they are not the rolling road blocks they once were and sights like an overloaded Sprite threatening to take control of an underpowered Morris Marina are now much rarer.
G.Harman
NY wrote
No it doesn't but it does make a big difference with crash stops from speed.
I don't.
And the other problem with small trailers is that they can be invisible out the back window.
Interesting.
They shouldn't be. If you can't see through the back window, you need more wing mirror.
My brother, like many people, retired and bought a motor home after a lifetime of driving nothing bigger than a sedan. He also towed a Toyota behind it. He was all in favor of an additional endorsement.
I've tried to teach someone how to back up with a trailer and it can be frustrating. Many spend a lot of time and scheming to make sure they never will have to. Commercial campgrounds like KOA prominently advertise pull-through sites. When the fateful day comes when they have to go backwards, they in trouble.
Definitely the shorted the hitch to axle dimension, the trickier it is. Even with big trucks a 53' trailer is easier than a 21' pup for straight backing. It's obviously harder to maneuver in tight spaces.
Some people mount a hitch ball on the front bumper. It's often a lot easier to push a trailer around than trying to back it.
It all has to do with ratios - the distance between the rear axle and the hitch pivot, and the distance between the hitch pivot and the trailer axle. The closer the hitch is tothe towing vehicle axle the easier it is to back - and the greater the distance between the hitch pivot and the trailer ball the easier it is to back - and the ratio between the two - how much the trailer length is compared to the hitch length.
You haven't had "fun" untill you've backed a 4 wheel hay wagon with automotive type steering behind a baler on an offset hitch behind a tractor - with the wagon loaded 10 bales high - when you cut the corner a bit short coming around a gate post - - -
Often see that done for boat trailers so the driver can see when the boat has floated . I was using small trailer in the UK sense for a small cargo mover This sort of thing.
A couple of decades ago there was a small fad cut an original mini in half and the roof off ,weld on a towbar and make a cheap small trailer out of it. havn't seen one around for years though. Most wern't this smart.
G.Harman
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