Drawbar
The towing and steering device on towed vehicles is called a drawbar . In the case of trailers with one or more centrally arranged axles, it is firmly connected to the vehicle and in the case of multi-axle trailers with turntable steering it is movably attached to the steering ring of the front axle .
In the case of trailers , it is usually made of metal and forms the connection to the trailer coupling of the towing vehicle . In carriages or handcarts , it can also be made of wood . Horse-drawn carts have drawbar goggles to which the so-called hold - ups for the draft animals are attached.
Carts
Drawbars on carts are not used by the draft animals to pull, but to stop ( brake ) and operate the turntable ( steering ). The wagon will strands drawn, which are attached to the carriage.
A drawbar is used when two animals are to stop the car. They are clamped symmetrically to the right and left of the drawbar and can then brake the wagon with the help of the hold- open mechanism so that the vehicle does not drive up from behind. Depending on the type of wagon and the draft animals, additional brakes are required.
For vehicles with an uneven number of pole horses or scissor horses or other draft animals that go in the first row in front of the wagon, scissors are used instead of a drawbar so that the symmetry is maintained. A pair of scissors consists of two rods made of wood or metal, also called anzen or trees, which, depending on the tension , are attached either to the wagon (docking tension ) or to the explosive scale. The scissors can be folded up to put the draft animal in front of the wagon. Then the anzen are folded down and attached to the dishes .
Most of the time, scissors and drawbars can be removed so that the wagons require less space in the carriage house . Gabel or Anze or Anse are dialect expressions for scissors. The expression fork drawbar is listed in Meyers Konversations-Lexikon from 1885-1892 as a name for scissors.
Light racing sulkies are pulled directly with the scissors, there are neither strings nor logs in the tension for trotting races .
Electronic drawbar
An electronic drawbar is the non- tactile coupling of vehicles (mostly commercial vehicles) with the help of electronics and computer technology . The vehicles in the rear automatically follow the lead vehicle as if they were coupled to the lead vehicle with a real drawbar. This requires extensive sensors (e.g. for distance measurement and image / pattern recognition ) as well as special software . Electronic drawbars are currently still in development. They should make it possible to control a column of vehicles with a short distance and only one driver and to use less fuel due to the lower air resistance .
Historical
The drawbar right describes an earlier easement in which the drawbar of a car parked on the property was allowed to reach the neighboring property.
