Beam benders etc

[Muswell]

I had a MZ250 in the early 70s. Really strong and simple, even had a rubber gaiter over the chain to keep it clean. What I most remember is how fierce the back brake was. As I was driving it home from the dealer on a wet road I stopped at a pedestrian crossing and really impressed said pedestrian with my dramatic lock-up of the back wheel and subsequent manoeuvres.

[Barryd999]

locoman - 2013-03-24 6:16 PM

 

If your Tax Disc is out of date, and the vehicle is on the Public Highway, UK or EU, your Insurance is Invalid,

 

Worth thinking about !! :-S

 

Is it? nowhere in my insurance contract does it state it has to be taxed. It simply states "in a road worthy condition"

 

My vehicle is always taxed its just that sometimes it runs out while I am abroad. Im pretty sure you cant get the DVLA to post it to an Aire or Sosta so your stuffed.

 

I think all you could get done for on the way home is failure to display the disk. Any cameras would pick it up as taxed so there shouldnt be a problem. Its not that I am wanting to flout the law but it must be a common problem for motorhomers. How do you get around it?

[colin]

Derek Uzzell - 2013-03-25 9:37 AM

 

colin - 2013-03-25 9:24 AM

 

...p.s. It is my understanding /maybe wrong\ that any vehicle must meet the legal requirements of the country it is registered in even whilst in another country else it does not meet the cross border refs, but I've never researched this.

 

Now's your opportunity. ;-)

Not when I'm on a 2.8in screen mobile, it's bad enough trying to read this forum :-(

[Derek Uzzell]

Curtisden - 2013-03-25 11:55 AM

 

Tony Jones - 2013-03-25 11:45 AM

 

Let's just look at this insurance/VED thing logically.

 

Insurance is the FIRST legal requirement. You can drive a vehicle without tax in some circumstances (eg to a pre-booked MoT), but never without insurance. And in order to GET a tax disc, you have to produce valid insurance (and MoT if applicable).

 

So if a vehicle has "none of the above," you FIRST have to insure it, THEN get an MoT, and only then can you tax it. If insurance depended on tax, the whole process would become impossible, and no-one could have a legal vehicle!

 

 

OK so as you drive off the Frerry clutching the pre arranged appointment at Halford's Dover for the out of date MOT to be renewed you may be covered. But in all other situations you are not. But in this country and i expect France Maybe? to have a MH on the highway even Parked needs Tax. Without Tax on the highway its a criminal act to drive or park.There are no other exceptions. Forget the insurance company. Its the criminal law that matters here.

 

Vehicle 'road tax' (properly called Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) within the UK) often involves a 'vignette' of some type being displayed on the vehicle. In the UK we have a system where a 'tax-disk', that carries registration-details and an expiry date, must be prominently displayed on a UK-registered vehicle.

 

France used to collect revenue from French-registered vehicles via a vignette-based system, but this system was abolished for all French-registered vehicles by 2001. Since then, French-registered vehicles have carried no 'tax-disk' (though they do carry an indicator that they are insured).

 

In France and the UK it will be an offence to drive an uninsured vehicle.

 

In both countries it will also be a legal requirement (according to the age of the vehicle) to comply with the appropriate national vehicle-testing regulations. In the UK a UK-registered car requires an MOT-test when it's 3 years old and then annually. In France a French-registered car requires a CT (Contrôle Technique) test when it's 4 years old and then biennially.

 

If a French-registered car, aged between 3 and 4 years of age, were driven in the UK it won't have needed to have been CT-tested in France. Although a UK-registered car of exactly the same age must have been MOT-tested (and passed that test) to be legally driven in the UK, this criterion won't apply to the French-registered car. The only requirement for the latter vehicle to be 'safety-tested' prior to 4 years of age would be if there was an intention to register the vehicle in the UK, when the car would need to be MOT-tested.

 

There's no doubt whatsover that a motorist driving a vehicle that fails to comply with the regulations that apply to his/her vehicle in the country in which that vehicle is registered will be committing an offence when he/she is driving that vehicle in that country. However (as should be evident from the examples I've given above) a regulatory motoring 'offence' in one country won't necessarily be an offence in another. To be legally driven in the UK, a UK-registered vehicle needs to a) display a current tax-disk and b) have been safety-tested at 3 years of age. To be legally driven in the UK, a French-registered vehicle a) cannot display a tax-disk (because there's no equivalent French system) and b) does not need to be safety-tested at 3 years.

 

Now, if I'm a clued-up UK customs officer or policeman, on inspecting the paperwork of motorists driving French-registered cars in the UK, I will a) appreciate that the lack of a 'tax disk' on the vehicle isn't an offence and b) that if the vehicle is over 3 years old (but less than 4) that the vehicle does not need a 'safety-test' certificate even though one would be required for a UK-registered vehicle. Even if I notice that, say, a French-registered vehicle should have a 'safety-test' certificate, what UK law can I use to prosecute the driver?

 

It's irrational to say about VED and the MOT-test that "...it is a crime in both France and the UK to drive on the road without both", as it's impossible for a French-registered vehicle to carry a 'tax-disk' and France has its own safety-testing system. There's no argument that vehicles must comply with the relevant revenue-gathering/safety-testing regulations of the country in which they are registered, but that's not the issue here.

 

As I said earlier

 

"French police have the right to inspect a motorist's documentation and to check his/her vehicle for roadworthiness. Like Barry, I would have thought French police have no authority to prosecute a UK tourist whose vehicle is not UK-taxed, though they might well wish to check that the information on the tax-disk matches the vehicle as, if it didn't, it might indicate the vehicle had been stolen."

 

I can fully understand why a UK customs officer or policeman might inspect the documentation of vehicles incoming to the UK and, on vehicles that carry any sort of 'tax-disk', that the information on that vignette looks OK. And vice versa for customs officers /policemen of non-UK countries. But isn't that pretty much what I said in the above paragraph?

 

When I drove my Hobby back to the UK after purchasing it in Germany, the vehicle and its documentation were inspected closely at the French border (on an autoroute) and, when I asked why, the officials told me they kept an eye out for stolen vehicles and smugglers. This makes perfect sense.

 

I can appreciate that (as you described happened to you near Cahors) the French police might choose to inspect your vehicle's tax-disk. But I remain unconvinced that, should your tax-disk have been found not to comply with the relevant UK regulations (ie. if a UK policeman had inspected the disk in the UK, found an irregularity and you had subsequently been successfully prosecuted under UK law) that the French police would have had any authority to similarly prosecute you in their country. UK law applies in the UK: French law applies in France.

 

Regarding colin's comment about Alonosis, a motorist visiting a country not the one in which his/her vehicle is registered is considered to be 'temporarily importing' the vehicle. If the vehicle remains in the 'foreign' country for a long period (a total of more than 6 months in 12 if I recall correctly), the vehicle is required to be registered in that country. The likelihood is that the 'offences' committed by the owners of the British registered vehicles related to them having not been registered in Greece, rather than to the cars having out-of-date UK tax-disks (which of course would have been pointers to the vehicles being 'long stayers'.)

[Derek Uzzell]

blackfingers - 2013-03-25 12:05 PM

 

Derek Uzzell - 2013-03-24 9:17 AM

 

 

When I was in France last year I met three British motorcyclists in Mayenne, one of which was riding a 1980s MZ 250cc bike...

.... I asked "Are you going far?" thinking that, with such an old bike, he'd be just be toodling around northern France for a while. "Down the west coast, of France, Spain, Portugal and finally Morocco." "There's optimism", I thought.

 

Oh, Derek - such little faith in 'old' machinery!

 

In the pic a 1951 Vincent Comet, in Plataria, Greece in 2010. 1,850 miles to get there, plus much the same miles to return, plus a bit of touring in Greece itself. No 'backup' needed - who would want it?

MZs and Vins go on for ever...

 

IanL.

 

There's old bikes and old bikes...

 

The MZ I mentioned was no concours-standard Vincent, and the £100 purchase price disclosed by the owner seemed about right to me. Particularly attractive was the large wooden plywood box on the rear carrier! I asked the owner how he planned to get two-stroke oil (which I assumed needed to be used in the bike's oil-reservoir) on the long trip south. "Chain-saw oil should be OK", was the reply.

 

The three British motorcyclists were on the same campsite as us. The morning we left they were standing unhappily in the entrance to the shower-block as it was raining stair-rods. All that day it rained and rained. After another wet campsite night a bit further south we lunched at a Relais Routier facing a main road. Partway through the meal we saw the three bikes go by, also heading south and into an atrocious weather forecast that we soon discovered to be totally accurate. That sort of weather makes me realise why I stopped motorcycling.

 

I recounted the MZ tale at a lunch-party back in the UK, and the guy I was talking to told me he'd bought one cheaply when he decided in his 50s that he might like to try motorcycling. He said the turning-circle was so wide that he couldn't negotiate the training-course 'slaloms' and suffered the humiliation of being relegatedto a "horrid scootery thing".