In instances like these, when trying to pull another stuck vehicle, if at all possible, it's best to put a heavy blanket over the towing line so that if it snaps it has less of a chance to whip around and really hurt someone.
There are towing straps that have some stretch for this but if using chains or a rope with zero stretch, best to grab a heavy blanket of sorts and drape it over the chain/rope.
My uncle had a chain snap while his friend was trying to tow a truck out of the mud.
The chain grazed the side of his head, knocked him unconscious and cracked his skull.
The doctor said had the chain been even a centimeter over to the right he would of been killed instantly, he now has a permanent goose egg where the chain hit on the left side of his temple.
I once was watching a neighbor trying to pull down a big oak stump, probably 20 feet high. They had a 1" steel cable wrapped around the top of the stump and connected to a pickup. After several hard jerks, the cable snapped, whipped around and sliced the truck's bed sidewalls horizontally almost to the cab. I learned what a lot of stored energy can do very quickly that afternoon. Thankfully I was a few hundred feet away and no one on the job was injured.
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u/addsomethingepic 2d ago
All those people standing in snapping distance of that chain