Sorry - I've just thought - I thought when the van was over 7.5 tonnes it had to do 50 on singles, 60 on duals or am I thinking of something else?
Adam
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Correct Adski
Goods vehicles max laden weight over 7.5 tonnes:
Motorway 60 DC 50 other road 40
Sorry about the reference for VOSA from old notes should be
www.vosa.gov.uk/
DVD
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iirc HJ answered this in the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully he'll spot this and jump in.
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This is what I read recently (can't remember just where) and sent it as a "Worth noting" e-mail to a friend who runs a business where the staff also all use the vans privately:
"I am a retired academic who uses a light van for private motoring, a
Peugeot Expert 1·9 that is classified on its V5 registration document as a
light goods vehicle. On the windscreen disc it is graded LGV1. In November
2003 I received a speeding ticket for travelling at 57mph on the A5 in
Shropshire. The police confirmed that this stretch of road carries a
national speed limit of 60mph. I queried the notice and was told that my
vehicle is registered with the DVLA as a "light goods vehicle under 7·5
tonnes maximum laden weight" and as such is "restricted to 50mph on normal
roads". I accepted my fine and three penalty points but have queried my
vehicle's classification with the DVLA. What is going on?
N.M., Ross-on-Wye
a.. According to Hughes Guide to Traffic Law for the Enforcement Officer
(www.hughesguides.com), a "car-derived van" is subject to the same vehicle
speed limits as a car. Unfortunately an Expert is not a "car-derived van"
and the fact it has spawned a car does not alter that fact. Car-derived vans
are defined by being under two tonnes maximum laden weight. Vans above that
but under 7·5 tonnes m/w are restricted to 50mph on single carriageways and
60mph on dual carriageways. Drivers of mid-sized vans such as the Peugeot
Expert or Ford Transit Connect (some of which are CDVs, some light goods
vehicles) should be aware of this. It's all written up in The Highway Code.
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Anyone know whether the Renault Kangoo is a CDV or not? Which came first: the car or the van?
I've got to admit, this sounds like a really ridiculous bit of legislation. Highly amusing too, unless your name is Norman Morris from Ross on Wye...
Is the Kangoo related to the Expert?
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The Kangoo is a CDV - sometimes it's called the Kangoo Expression.
It would certainly have been a van first, otherwise it won't be a car derived van...:-)
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Wow - Forgot about that!
Cockle, Tell me more baout your thoughts on the connect, which one did you get? LWB SWB LX?
cheers
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Well, looks like the reasoning is a van has, or is likely to have, a higher load to vehicle weight ratio and is therefore likely to be 'heavy' more often than a heavy car. So I'll happily trundle along that little bit slower than I used to, so when you get behind a Connect doing 50 on a nice straight single carriageway A-road please don't flash, it'll be me!
RF, I didn't get a choice, our fleet managers do that for us, sadly. We ended up with the SWB T200L with Turbo Diesel 1.8. On the whole I'm quite impressed with it, nice upright driving position at a reasonable height to see the road ahead and I no longer have to peer round 4X4's when trying to get on roundabouts, I can now see through their windows!
Pros:- Good driving position; nice responsive engine pulls well in virually all situations; accelerates nicely so able to keep up with traffic; comfortable ride; handles positively; side sliding door handy to get to front of load space; security also seems good with deadlocking on all doors and keyed engine compartment.
Cons:- Large gap between sun visors allowing sun to dazzle; visibility around the A pillar could be better, can easily lose a pedestrian or cyclist; cab gets hot in sunlight due to larger screen area, tight fleet manager went for the option without A/C!; and , believe it or not, I can't get as much kit in it as my old Escort!
Overall, apart from a few niggles, I can see why it won Van of the Year, it's certainly not to be ignored if you're looking for a light van.
Cockle
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How many van drivers (including police in vans) keep to 50mph on single carriageways?
How many LGV's keep to 40mph on single carriageways?
Cheers. SS
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But if they are at risk of picking up a speeding ticket, then there might well be a change of heart by their drivers....
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I always thought they applied lower speed limits to heavier vehicles because of their weights and subsequent momentum in a collision, not because of how well they steer etc.
Obviously, it's going to be a lot more serious if you rear end someone on the motorway, at, say, a relative speed of 30MPH than if a car did the same.
As to the 2 tonne limit - well, you have to pick a number, and two is nice and round. ;)
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Astonishing that you managed to get a ticket. You don't get flashed by a scamera, so there must have been a real live person operating it.
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this really puzzles me as a modern heaviley laden Expert/Dispatch with abs, eba, ebd ect has a far shorter stopping distance than an old lady in her rover metro
How really can anyone be done for this as cameras cannot tell the difference and we dont have police cars on traffic patrol as they all on terrorism duties. Is this law not pointless as if you managed to get over the speed limit on a piece of our congested crumbling road network on a day with a traffic officer who saw you and knew the law and was bothered it would be a miracle.
Has anyone told merc sprinter drivers I have been overtaken often on A roads and dual carragways when I have been moving swiftly I would say some have been 30 + mph over the speed limit.
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Cameras can tell the difference now - or rather some can.
Not sure how - at a guess I imagine there'd be piezo strips before the camera to guess weight.
All I know is that I've seen a photo of a truck getting done for 59mph on a NSL road.
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I missed this thread the first time round.
Couple of thoughts.
1. You can't change the Connect type van's weight by simply losing 25kg. I would imagine (but don't know for a fact) that these van's are plated at time of their building with the GVW of 2000kg plus. That plating stays with that "plated weight" even if you flung out the spare seats, wind up window motors, bits and pieces of trim etc. You could possibly get it re-plated to reflect the lower new weight.
2. The car derived van definition is a brilliant (no sarcasm here) pre Euro bit of law, written in the days of Morris 1000s and Ford Escorts. Intelligent forward thinking obviously drafted in cooperation with Car makers to make things easier for small traders by-passing huge chunks of Traffic Law (plating, teting etc). What those Civil Servants of yore didn't forsee was that there would huge advances in the safety of vehicles (Disc Brakes, PAS, etc), a new class of light vans - between a Commer and a Morris 1000 and the fact that there would be van derived cars ! The law needs updating to reflect current designs, but no doubt that's too complicated for our unelected leaders in Brussels/Stasbourg wherever.
3. Thinking about the "Academic's" question I would suggest that there could be a way around the legistlation to re-classify the van (as its legally defined)to be a car for private use. This assumption woks on the basis that we are led by people who can use imagination and that that still can find its way the Civil Service chain of command !
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Regarding cameras telling the difference - if it was using the new number plate reading technology I would presume it would be linked in to the DVLA data base hence being able to immediately diffentiate between a van and a car.
Perhaps I'm giving technology too much credit but that seems to be the road we're going down, like it or not.
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What is a berlingo multispace/ pug partner a car or a van as in the uk the van came first ?
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I have to say that I'm extremely glad I "have" to read every thread as part of moderating this site, othewise I would have passed this one by!
I am ashamed to say that I had no idea about this difference. I'm just lucky that there aren't any SCW roads around here that will let me do 60!
I frequent a few other forums aimed at tradesmen. I'm off to attach links to this thread/forum on them.
Hugo
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I think PU puts his finger on it. A piece of law well in need of update, dating from the days when vans jumped straight from the Bedford Beagle to the CF or Thames Trader.
There are now plenty of mid weight vans, very very similar to MPV's - look at the Fiat SCudo and its PSA clones then the C8/806/Ulysse - yet although the MPV's are heavier they run in car limits. The Berlingo Multispace grosses out a shade under the 2tonne limit but quite possible some of the vans go over. Do they have enough commonality with the ZX/306 (and at the rear the 405) to be car derived? A test case would keep a few lawyers in Xmas drinkies!!!
Irrespective of any EU complications it's just too simple for a clause in the next Road Traffic Act. And wouldn't the 4x4 crowd go ballistic when the new rules clobbered them instead.
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There are now plenty of mid weight vans, very very similar to MPV's - look at the Fiat SCudo and its PSA clones then the C8/806/Ulysse - yet although the MPV's are heavier they run in car limits. The Berlingo Multispace grosses out a shade under the 2tonne limit but quite possible some of the vans go over. Do they have enough commonality with the ZX/306 (and at the rear the 405) to be car derived? A test case would keep a few lawyers in Xmas drinkies!!!
The Citroen C3 is actually derived from the Berlingo. It started off as a Berlingo concept called the Bubble.
It's the only case i know of a van derived car!
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I do know of a Transit Connect driver who received a PCN for doing 60mph on a NSL road, queried it and was told that he should have been doing 50mph as his van was over 2 tonnes GVW.
An amazing oversight on the part of Ford to design a van 25kg too heavy but then perhaps even they didn't know, or didn't care as presumably this archaic law only exists in the UK.
The new VW Caddy has the same weight problem.
Regarding cameras telling the difference - if it was using the new number plate reading technology I would presume it would be linked in to the DVLA data base hence being able to immediately diffentiate between a van and a car. Perhaps I'm giving technology too much credit but that seems to be the road we're going down, like it or not.
If you're referring to the SPECS cameras, the only ones I know of are used in motorway roadworks with a 40mph or 50mph limit, or on the A43 in Northampton which is a dual carriageway with a 50mph limit. Besides, I don't know quite how they work but I'm not sure that they are able to access the DVLA database quickly enough to check what type of vehicle is wearing every single one out of hundreds per minute of number plates that pass them. More likely is that they simply store the registration number, match it up with one recognised by the second camera, and the registration number of any vehicle that has been calculated to have exceeded the set limit is then used to access the database.
Gatso cameras are triggered by a vehicle moving past the camera at a preset speed, so I wonder how did the OP get caught out?
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You seem to be getting mixed up between LGV and HGV speed limits
Have a look at The Highway Code for the correct figures
www.highwaycode.gov.uk/09.htm#103
Andy
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Is this a case for a change in the law? I think vans and other light goods (up to 3.5 tonnes MPW - the heaviest vehicles that can be driven by ANY private car licence holder) should be subject to the same speed limits as cars. White Van Man already thinks that Transits etc. are subject to limits 10 mph ABOVE those for cars anyway!
A change in the law wouldn't make any difference to the way vans are driven and it would remove any un-neccessary enforcement by the police. In the days of BMC J4's, Rear-engined VW vans or those horrible Commer PB vans, the lower limits might have made sense, but not now.
cheers, Sofa Spud
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Quick look in the Highway Code and it would be obvious that the speed limits apply to 'Goods' vehicles, and it's just the size that changes. It just so happens the thread relates to the lower weight limit vehicles. May or may not like those rules but that is how they are. As so many van drivers run part laden, they could simply buy an estate car instead... oops no cos that means paying VAT, and loosing the business perks of a van!
It's a shame that some of the 'good drivers' wern't aware of the the simple principles of the Highway code.
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