[Richard]

If I could build on Dave’s commentary, and I have posted this comment on the forum previously.

I looked carefully at all the pictures I could find of the infamous run away toads. No doubt it is a scary and dangerous situation. In none of my comments do I assign blame.

I came to a couple of conclusions. One, the failure mechanism was side to side fatigue of either the frame of the towed vehicle or the baseplate. Two, the mounting, the frame, and the baseplate were not engineered robustly for side to side stresses. Three, lifted vehicles with large tires exacerbate the situation.

I couple that with an experience I had last year while driving on I75 in Florida. I came up behind a rather late model Newell towing an F 150. I was absolutely SHOCKED at the violent slamming that I observed as the toad moved from one side to the other. When the toad would oscillate from side to side, it slammed at the end of each oscillation. I waved the owner into a rest area to warn him of the situation. I said he could not feel it in the coach. I examined the tow bar and base plate with him to try to understand what was going own. He had a standard tow bar and a riser to make the tow bar level. Both were simply pinned with normal pins, and both had a small amount of slop. I am of the opinion that that slop was the root cause of the violence I observed.

I am also of the opinion that the steerable tag increases the side to side forces on the towed vehicle in slow speed manuevers. I am of the opinion that oversized tires increase the side to side forces.

I would highly recommend that anyone towing install any of the devices intended to take the slop out of the connection. I would highly recommend that if you are towing a Jeep, that you examine the base plate to see if there is any side to side bracing. If not, have someone weld in side to side bracing.

Just my .02