Scenario: A dual carriageway, three lanes in each direction, 40mph limit.
Traffic was moderately heavy. I was in the centre lane, and noticed, several cars in front, a Land Rover pulling a trailer.
The trailer was heavily overloaded, with long baulks of timber, overhanging the trailer by perhaps 15 feet. the timbers looked about 6 inches by 8 inches in section, and there were perhaps 10 of them (these sizes and counts were my impressions).
As we progressed, the speed limit changed from 40 to 70, and the traffic flow started to speed up. This Land Rover obviously couldn't accelerate as quickly as the rest of the traffic, and the cars started to overtake it. I moved to the outside lane as the opportunity arose.
When I got to within a couple of cars of the trailer (it still in the inside lane, me in the outside), I noticed it start to wobble. Now, "wobble" doesn't begin to describe what happened. The trailer started to move from side to side, pulling its tow vehicle with it, eventually sweeping across all three lanes about three times.
It gradually slowed, but still totally out of control, until it finally stopped on the grass verge.
Luckily for me, I was aware of the potential hazard, but not of how severe it would get, and was keeping an eye on it from way back. Also, all the car drivers in the vicinity didn't panic, all slowed safely behind this horrendous potential accident.
At the time, I wasn't too frightened, there wasn't time. In retrospect, things could have been so much worse.
My conclusions from this are simply that we have to be alert to what's going on at all times, and to give trailers as wide a berth as possible.
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