Tail swing performance of the South African car-carrier fleet

Abstract

The practice of issuing of abnormal load permits to South African car-carriers (allowing a 300 mm increase in height and 500 mm increase in length) is being phased out. Such allowances will only be granted if a car-carrier complies with the Australian Performance-Based Standards scheme, which is currently the basis for a PBS demonstration project in South Africa. This study calculated that only 20% of the existing South African car-carrier fleet complies with the required 0.30 m Level 1 tail swing limit. This limit is shown to be consistent with the 3.7 m rear overhang limit enforced by the Australian Design Rule 43/04. In contrast, South African legislation allows rear overhangs of up to 7 m. This is shown to result in a tail swing of 1.25 m. A proposal to temporarily relax the 0.30 m tail swing limit to 0.45 m, and hence include around 80% of the existing fleet, was turned down by the South African road authorities.