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Are Slideout Rooms "Standards" Adequate For Safety?
We attended the Perry, Georgia 2001 Rally. Congratulations! JD Gallant was mentioned as an expert at two seminars--one on towing and one on safety. The "towing" seminar was held by a partner in a Georgia engineering firm who used your towing charts and said you had the only data that he could find. RV Consumer Group needed a booth of some sort to get the word out. We saw the new Country Coach "triple" slides. Again, I was told that the structure reinforcement was an additional 1 1/2" steel tube on each end. The roof is aluminum and wood with a "special" screwed aluminum connector rail to the sidewalls. I can only envision a motor home with these gaping holes, as I can't understand how the slide would reinforce the chassis in a wreck. You need to be definitive about this, if you can, as slides are all over the industry. We had an in-depth tour of the Wanderlodge fabrication and chassis facilities. They reinforce their slide openings with one more corrugated rail at each end attached to the original with a thin 1/8"+/- thick plate which is welded. Sidewalls are again attached to the roof structure with an aluminum connector rail. It looked OK with the slide in place, but I don't see how this reinforcement and top structure could hold in a frontal/roll accident. So clearly, some sort of industry "standard" is evolving here. The manufacturing/engineering firms have obviously huddled together for some conclusion. The question is---is it safe for those of us who sit in front of all this? JD Gallant is the Ralph Nader of the industry. You'll never be their friend, of course, but so what? That's not your job. But you can somehow get them to step to the plate and defend/improve their safety/quality. Good luck! Chuck Maxwell, Ohio
Our Response: Thanks for your input, Chuck As you know, we can only judge good engineering by the results of accidents and longevity. When it comes to slideout rooms, the jury is still out although we've seen some results that have been far from positive. We maintain our premise that the only slideout room that will come close to being as strong as the wall itself will be a slideout room that is firmly "locked" to the wall -- something like the large sliding bolt locks used with heavy-duty equipment. At the risk of sounding fatalistic to some readers, changes may occur only after a number of people die by being crushed from the back or the sides - then will we have a better picture. Clearly, this is not the way it should happen. |
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