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Why would we believe what Towsure say (when they are trying to sell us something) when on the website for The Caravan Club there is the following information which has been produced by the National Caravan Council and is supported by The Camping & Caravanning Club, the NTTA and SMMT:

Correct Attachment of Breakaway Cables ................... Where there is a designated attachment point on the towbar ....................

 Either:

Detachable ball

Or, you could just buy a carabina and use this on the ring that the 'weak type' of clip uses.  Works for me.

Mike

The bracket only costs a couple of quid for goodness sake!!!

Wrapping around the frame of your towbar costs nothing.

Wrapping it around the towball costs nothing, except lives if it fails.

The whole idea of the cable is if the van comes away from your car i.e. towball failure, therefore if its wrapped around your towball it won't work.

There is no reason to wrap it around the towball.

caravan club advice

Correct attachment of breakaway cables
(PDF opens in a new window - 309kB)

That fact sheet is from 2003.

I thought they changed the requirements last year.

I maybe wrong, but it is surely safer attached to a bracket.

This is text from the NTTA website .
Do not loop it round the towball neck unless you can find no alternative .

What you could really say is you should make every effort to find an alternative , if your tow ball was to fail ( ie snap off ) the breakaway cable would be a waste of time .
Weather the law says it's ok to wrap round the towball or not is not the point , you should have/make the safest attachment of the breakaway cable possible . 

This sentance should say .
Where no designated attachment point has been provided on the towbar: You should have one fitted .

atb

Wizard

I maybe wrong, but it is surely safer attached to a bracket

true but some removable types have no location for a bracket to be fixed for the cable to fit on.once forgot to remove mine after reversing on to a pitch.it worked though,the handbrake was full on as never before and the cable clip was in a straight line.cost me £9.50 to get one made at a boat yard.carry a spare now.

I don't see why you say that if it is wrapped around the towball it won't work - the only time I have had a caravan come off the hitch the breakaway cable stayed on the ball - it took the Police half an hour to get it off so they could move the caravan away from the car.

The bracket shown on the Towsure website isn't big enough for the cable clip to go through and be wrapped back on itself as it should be, clipping it direct to the bracket would mean it would be too long and may not work properly.

As I understand it the reason for not attaching the cable to the towball is not so much that the towball will fail but the greater possibility that someone will not attach the tow hitch to the towball correctly. The risk is that the tow hitch will part company with the tow ball and the cable could slip over the tow ball thus providing no protection to stop the van.

David