RV Driving Tips: Maneuvering a Right-Hand Turn

When I'm driving in an RV I try to stay out of congested areas. I try to stay out of the city. The campgrounds are usually out in an easy, wide open place to get to but every once in a while you have to go downtown. You have to get into town, and making a right hand turn is probably one of the most challenging maneuvers in an RV. You need to know how your vehicle tracks and making a left-hand turn, it's fairly easy. You've got all that real estate in the middle of the intersection. But a right-hand turn, you'll notice when we're coming up here, especially when they don't have a turn lane, then I've got signs. I've got the, you know, in this case you've got the dip ditch that comes down here. A lot of times I'll come in and we'll have a fire hydrant or a traffic sign or something in the way. So I need to figure out and I needed to be prepared to make that right-hand turn. Interstates are gonna be 14 feet wide. The typical city street is only about 10 and some of them are even a little more narrow than that. Then you add all the traffic and everything that goes with it. There are times that I could not make a legal right-hand turn which means I start in this lane I'm in and turn into that same inside lane on my right hand turn. So I've got to be prepared. And I know that coming up here and just a couple blocks that I have a right-hand turn I need to make to get back to our facility. So I want to be prepared. I want to look and see, first of all what kind of traffic I have coming in here. I may need to cheat a little bit over to this left hand side. And what I've done beforehand, and I do this with new drivers all the time. Take them out to a parking lot and we figure out what's your, we call it a fulcrum point. What's the point where you get to when you know you could make that turn. And a lot of times it depends on the steering radius. Diesel pusher like this, I've got a pretty tight steering radius so I can make a little tighter turn. Some of the other ones I don't. So I know I got to start earlier. I might have to swing out into this lane over here to make that turn. So I need to see who's coming, and I've got a truck coming here, so I can't do that. Now we're looking forward ahead here, same way with the truck or trailer. I want to know how that trailer tracks behind me so I don't clip something making that right-hand turn. We're gonna come up to the next stop light up here. And one of the challenges is gonna be, in this situation is, we have a stop light and that means, not went green. That's a good thing because then I can cheat a little bit to this side. I do have traffic coming over here and I've got this row of cars up there. So if I'm gonna have to cheat on this one it's not gonna be on this side. I noticed I've got a truck over there. The other thing is, I'm aware of all this stuff. So don't panic. And I like the fact that I've got a turn lane here I can get over. I can actually give myself a little extra room on this. And notice I got the sewer storm drain in there. I'm going in here. Again, this is a much tighter turning radius with this unit, but be prepared know how your unit turns and see what's in the way if I had to cheat out a little bit over to that. The other thing is don't panic. You know, I've had times where I've gotten into that area and all of a sudden somebody came up right in front of me and I was stuck. I just stopped. I waited. They had to move. So don't panic, but again, the more prepared you are and aware of your turning radius and what your turn looks like, the better off you are. And I've had times where I've seen a corner where I didn't think I could make it. I went up and took a left-hand turn and went around the block and came back. I don't have to make that turn if I don't like it. Now here's another tight turn we're gonna come into. I'm gonna cheat a little bit to the left, take that corner, make sure my wheels don't drop off while I'm taking in. Tyre driveway to get in here and make it in. One last thing is we came in here and brought up another thought on driving. If you have a longer overhang in the back of departure angle we call it, and I'm just gonna pop this off , and you've got some tail dragon coming off the backside of this. One of the things you can do, especially when you're coming in and out of a fuel station or a driveway, that type of stuff, if it starts to drag on the back of it. One of the things you can do, if you've got room, especially in a fueling station, take it from a little bit of an angle. Don't go straight out, straight out's gonna get you, the back end's gonna drag out of it. If you go from a little bit of an angle in that it's gonna reduce that dragging off the back end. So again, be prepared. You should be able to make that right-hand turn with a little bit of practice.