Directive
Firstly
the legislation will be in the form of a Directive. This means that the UK, and
of course all other states, will be able to incorporate its requirements into
their laws in the way which best suits their existing legislation, institutions,
procedures and processes.
Definition of a "vehicle of historic
interest"
The
other thing we know is the terms of the definition of a 'vehicle of historic interest'.
We understand the definition to be 'any vehicle which is considered to be historic
by the Member State of registration or one of its appointed authorising bodies
and which fulfils all the following conditions:
< it was manufactured
or registered for the first time at least 30 years ago;
< its specific
type, as defined in national or EU law, is no longer in production;
<
it is historically preserved and maintained in its original state and has not
sustained substantial changes in the technical characteristics of its main components'.
It
is those vehicles EU governments will not have to test. It is in fact up to these
Governments whether they do indeed exempt these vehicles from testing. Our own
Department for Transport (DfT) is at pains to point out that the exemption is
a right they have, not a duty the must comply with.
Indeed
there is clearly a body of opinion in DfT that there might be a need for even
vehicles of historic interest to have some sort of periodic safety test if they
are to use the public highway.It
is no secret that the Federation would have preferred the definition to have been
simply age related. We argued our case, and lost. Some other countries had genuine
reasons why that would simply not have been acceptable. Now, we could go on arguing
for ever about which of the various wordings which have been suggested would have
been best. But we are where we are.
The key phrase in the definition of
a vehicle of historic interest which DfT will have to decide how they interpret
is the third one: 'it is historically preserved and maintained in its original
state and has not sustained substantial changes in the technical characteristics
of its main components'.
The task ahead now is to work with DfT with
a view to their applying this definition in the most favourable way. DfT are keen
to have our input, though we must recognise that there may be others who are equally
entitled to put their opinions forward about how our vehicles are dealt with.
It
is already clear that in setting out their own rules, DfT will probably want safety
to be a factor in how exemptions will be achieved, and this will inevitably involve
some complexity, not least because safety can be a subjective matter. DfT don't
have any preconceptions about how this could be achieved, and will be considering
everything from self-certification onwards. They do actively want to achieve the
most cost-effective outcome for everyone, including the owners of historic vehicles.
All
that said, it seems inevitable that there will indeed be some historic vehicles
which simply cannot be exempted, and the aim of the Federation will be to ensure
that as testing becomes more modern and automated, it still remains possible to
test those vehicles.
There has been some comment that the choice of a Directive
means the MOT can stay as it is. This might be a premature view.
It
is in the nature of the technical, as distinct from the drafting, aspects of the
Directive that they will be the least capable of being massaged to fit existing
rules while still meeting the requirement of the Directive. The Annexes in earlier
drafts were definitely aimed primarily at the current vehicle population, and
could have required significant adaptation to allow for 'manual' testing of old
and specialist vehicles. We have not seen the final form of the technical Annexes
to the text agreed, so we do not know how prescriptive they might be, or indeed
whether they were amended at all in these final discussions.
We
will have to see how DfT wishes to deal with the Annexes, and there might need
to be extensive discussion with them to ensure that, as far as possible, none
of this results in vehicles being unable to use the roads.
We
will be continuing to push for the interests of our members to be fully accounted
for as the UK adoption of the Directive proceeds. We will keep you posted as to
progress, and may indeed find ourselves consulting with you all as we progress
and any issues appear. If we do I hope we can rely on you all to help us by getting
as many and as complete answers to our questions as possible. |
