The Caravan Owners Club

[jackie]

OK guys, for what its worth, here is the first shot at a letter. So go on. Tear it to bits .
Keith McC (alias Chubbs)
__________________________________________________________


To
Constituency MP
at
House of Commons

Dear (member of parliament)
Out of date UK trailer legislation[u]
I wish to draw to your attention, and wish to seek your active support in changing, a piece of current UK legislation that creates an anomaly for a significant number of British road users. It concerns the long out-dated restriction applied to towing vehicles that requires a Goods Vehicle with a gross vehicle weight greater than 3500kg in order to tow a caravan that is 8' (2.5m) wide.

Any car may tow a trailer/caravan that is up to 7'6" (2.3m) wide, within certain sensible and understandable weight restrictions. However, the arbitrary width cut-off at 7'6" without regard to weight of the caravan, or weight or power of the tow-car, is now unacceptable, indefensible and requires to be brought into line with our European neighbours. As with increases in axle loading for HGVs in order to align with European practice there seems to be no good reason (other than restrictive practise to protect British Caravan manufacturers) not to standardise width regulations for towed caravans.

Clearly our roads are adequate or such wide vehicles and caravans would not be allowed at all. Our European visitors with cars pulling the wider caravans are 'deemed to be legal' here anyway by virtue of extant reciprocal agreements between UK and European countries. There appear to be absolutely no statistics whatsoever claiming to show that wider caravans are any less safe compared to the limited width caravans most often seen in UK. The experience in Europe shows no difference.

Is it not time to take the simple step and move to have this unnecessary piece of restrictive legislation removed from the statutes in the name of common sense as well as of European alignment?

At present the manufacturers of wider bodied caravans are abroad. Of course they are. But with a simple and sensible change in legislation our UK manufacturers would quickly change too and would find that their prospective market would perhaps more readily embrace Europeans too who have come to expect the extra few inches (or should I say millimeters?). It should be clearly understood that this is in no way a plea for even longer or even heavier caravans than at present permitted. Far from it. Many 8' wide caravans are actually shorter and lighter than some UK narrow caravans at the moment. The issue is the arbitrary width restriction that seems to defy logic, and is turning some of our law-abiding caravanning colleagues into HGV owners in order to pursue their hobby (!!!!) in a caravan with a little extra width as is most common on the continent.

I hope you will be able to progress this matter for caravanners like myself and I look forward to your response in due course.

Yours sincerely

**********************

[azahar]

On leaving the Hobby rally at K.W.P we set of for three months in Spain and fantastic it has been, with no problems towing the wide van, on the boat, in France or Spain, and while there I met many Hobby owners from every country, infact at one site there were more than a dozen Hobbys of every size, but one was an ex police traffic inspector in uk. and now towed his 8ft. hobby all over uk and europe, he gave me to understand that from Jan 1st 2005 the european directives that Blair signed, will come into force with many new laws and rules to bring uk into line with the rest of the EC. and hidden in this great pile, is one that will permit the towing of 8ft. trailers and vans, any one else heard anything about this??

ps. I have some photos of the first rally, How do I put them on the club site for all to see?? [/url]

[azahar]

On leaving the Hobby rally at K.W.P we set of for three months in Spain and fantastic it has been, with no problems towing the wide van, on the boat, in France or Spain, and while there I met many Hobby owners from every country, infact at one site there were more than a dozen Hobbys of every size, but one was an ex police traffic inspector in uk. and now towed his 8ft. hobby all over uk and europe, he gave me to understand that from Jan 1st 2005 the european directives that Blair signed, will come into force with many new laws and rules to bring uk into line with the rest of the EC. and hidden in this great pile, is one that will permit the towing of 8ft. trailers and vans, any one else heard anything about this??

ps. I have some photos of the first rally, How do I put them on the club site for all to see?? [/url]

[skudulike]

First I've heard of it, but I hope it's true!!

As for posting pictures on this forum, you cannot do this directly. The pictures must first exist somewhere on the internet and then you can either link to them or click the [Img] button then enter the properties of the link.

The other way is to open a free 'Webshots' account and then control your own photo album where you can post links to it or invite others to see it. Look at mine by clicking here

http://community.webshots.com/user/skudulike