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Meh. I moan about caravans when they hold me up so I'm not going to get on my high horse about this guy. I'd prefer to see one gunning down a motorway rather than doing 35 on an NSL single-carriageway.
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My bet is that his other half was in the caravan and he got the C6 home safely.............................. minus the caravan.
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Complete idiot, endangering the lives of other innocent motorists.
'Steady as a rock', 'smooth' and on a motorway.... Bit severe Xileno, unless you mean any car being driven at all is a danger to innocent motorists as of course it is in theory.
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"'Steady as a rock', 'smooth' and on a motorway.... "
Yes until something goes wrong and then that carnage is all over the place. I've been in a car (as a passenger) when a caravan suffered a blow out - not a nice experience I can assure you. And I wonder what the Police and his insurance company might have to say in the event of an accident. I stand by my comment..
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"'Steady as a rock', 'smooth' and on a motorway.... " Yes until something goes wrong and then that carnage is all over the place.
If by "carnage" you mean debris, then you're right, it will be all over the place. There is no reason to suppose things will go wrong though, any more than you suppose getting in any car and driving it at speed will result in an accident.
More power to the C6 driver's elbow; I suggest he was merely making good progress.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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Yes indeed Hawkeye. After all something can go wrong with an innocent motorist's well-maintained prestige car at a drearily legal 70mph - it might run over a bolt or something and destroy a tyre - with the same results. Yet the driver would not be regarded as a dangerous idiot.
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"I edged up to 95 but still he kept coming"
"There is no reason to suppose things will go wrong though, any more than you suppose getting in any car and driving it at speed will result in an accident.
More power to the C6 driver's elbow; I suggest he was merely making good progress."
Surely the issue is not whether or not the C6 was capable of towing at this speed but whether the caravan was safe at this speed. He must have been doing nearly (?) 100 mph and the French limit is 81 mph (130kph). Limit in Britain is 60 mph. These limits must reflect the safety of caravans at speed - and I'm not sure that caravans are designed to be towed at 100mph. OK he was making "good progress" but I still think it is irresponsible.
"Carnage" - OK, unlikely to be anyone in the van should there be a collision with crash barrier and the driver would probably get away with it, but caravans are extremely flimsy and would you like to be a following driver who came into contact with the "debris" at motorway speeds?
Definitely irresponsible!
As a sideline - interesting that someone with a £30,000 car would be towing a caravan. View in Britain is that caravanning/camping is a "cheap" holiday option, but on continent is just an option choice for holiday - done by all classes, quite often with very expensive outfits. On the other hand, he was probably a "traveller" - they seem to specialise in huge vans towed by S-class MBs/7 series BMs (or a Transit)!
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Phil
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Surely the issue is not whether or not the C6 was capable of towing at this speed but whether the caravan was safe at this speed.
This was the first thing which I thought about. More often than not, caravans will have a maximum towing speed, either laid down by the chassis or coachbuilder. Also, I?d image caravan tyres are engineered more for weight and durability as opposed to speed, but I could be wrong there.
Also, think of the pressure on the front windows of the caravan. No doubt he was pushing those to the limit. Should that have let go, it?d pressurise the inside of the caravan, probably blowing out the other windows too. Turning it into a rather large parachute........
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Some caravans are designed to be towed at speed, although most are not. The American cigar-tube thing, Airflow or something of the sort, is one example. But there are others.
There are two sorts of driver. One, on hearing of a caravan being towed at the ton while remaining rock steady and smooth, thinks how excellent; the other scowls and thinks how dangerous.
Both completely barmy of course.
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Phil
"View in Britain is that caravanning/camping is a "cheap" holiday option" I agree. The people who do it seem to have that view too. But when you look at the price of the things not to mention all of the other costs I'll stick to renting a cottage / jetting off somewhere.
JH
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"I'll stick to renting a cottage / jetting off somewhere."
You are quite right of course JH - it's a question of each to his own. You enjoy being "stuck in a cottage in one place for the whole of your hols" and the "nightmare of airports, flights, delays" etc and I enjoy "rambling around the continent in the caravan going where I want when I want"
Either way, I bet you are looking forward to your next holiday as much as I am - but I can assure you, I would not tow my van at 100 mph even if I had a C6!! They (vans) are very flimsy - once met a bloke in Greece who arrived at "our beach" with all his possessions tied with rope to his car roof. On chatting with him, he had had a blowout of a caravan tyre on a Yugoslav motorway, caravan had hit the central barrier and disintegrated. He said the only thing left that was recognisable was the chassis of the caravan which they had abandonned, picked up various belongings from the carriageway tied them to the roof and continued their journey - they slept under the stars! - he was dutch!
happy hols,
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Phil
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