Hopefully you never find yourself in a situation where you need to attach a tow strap to your truck or SUV. However, if you do, properly attaching one, whether you have tow hooks or not ...

About 5 a.m. a person in a Dodge truck pulling a utility trailer stopped on the shoulder of I-30 to adjust the towing straps. A Nissan car hit the utility trailer from behind, police said.

Then they needed a lanyard to drop it from the trapeze. A car tow strap had just the right load-bearing capacity. Next, a braking mechanism to stop the strap: An off-the-shelf brake from a Honda ...