I have no idea about towball standards or when they came in to being and quite frankly I don't really care. I assume as a customer with modern day consumer protection that the tow hitches fitted by car maufacturers or their dealers are legal and comply with the required specs.
I started towing in the days when tow bars were little more that a few bits of steel angle bar and a you could pick up a cast tow ball in a variety of outlets. The under side of the ball was rounded and often flowed in a smooth curve to the rest of the lump that was bolted to the bar or a drop plate and the underside was often quite thick and short.
Hire cars with tow hitches are not that common in the UK, we had a holiday booked and car couldn't be repaired by the time we were going away so we were provided with a Hired Disco to tow our caravan, I went to great lengths to explain that we needed a tow car suited to our caravan's weight and specified that we had an AlKo tow hitch that needed a swan neck style tow ball.
When the Disco 3 arrived unlike the hitch on our own Disco's the year old hire car had a tow bar with what I would describe as having a piece of box section protruding to the rear of the adjustable height plate and the ball appeared to sit on the box section with no lip to the underside of the ball and virtually no clearance on the under side of the ball so the AlKo hitch would not fit. It was also plainly obvious that if the tow car was on an up or down hill angle to the hitch the box section the ball is fitted too would have levered against the underside of the AlKo hitch. Whatever regs it may have been made to or should be made to it wouldn't fit and was obviously not safe.
When I contacted the hire company I was assued that the branded tow bar was a Landrover Approved tow hitch and that all the hire companies Land Rover fleet were fitted with the same tow bar assembly.
Having spent from 8.30 am until gone 4pm phoning our garage and hire companies many times as we had a 6am start the next morning to catch a ferry, in desperation I managed to get to talk to a senior hire car manager at the HO. of the provider In under ten minutes he had located a Disco 3 with a Landrover standard detachable tow hitch the same as on our own car and told me that this had happened before and that their Landrover cars now only came with the more expensive detachable L R towbars not the less expensive after market bars. Just back off hire the car was nowhere near us and I had nearly a two hour drive to the hire depot the car was at and they cleaned an preped it and waited for me to arrive as they closed at 6pm.
They also had two other Disco 3's with the same tow hitch as the car we were supplied with and I was told that it was not the first time they had encountered the problem and that from the bottom they had told top management that some of their Disco tow hitches were not suitable for towing everything.
Whatever the standards or regulations might be, if there is not enough clearance under the ball with a narrowish neck there is good chance something could go wrong.
The Disco's hitch looked wrong when I tried to hitch up our caravan compared to our own car. and it was wrong The tow bar was a branded item and I would have looked a complete chump if I had not checked and looked at the clearance of the underside of the AlKo hitch.
It doesn't matter what you understand, or about regulations or specs if you look at the hitch and it doesn't look right there is a good chance that it isn't right.
If the posts here have hilighted that there could possibly be a problem with some tow bar assemblies and hitches and carvanners check that their hitch has the correct ball and clearance all round and to the underside of the ball we should all be a lot safer from caravans straying from their tow cars
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