VNUK agreement update - extended consultation time & survey

We are members until we leave and have to comply with all of the laws until we repeal any of them. This comes into force now, we will leave the EU in approx 2 years plus.

Yes, thats the outcome of the Vnuk case.

GB govt are not happy with this as it will require ALL motorsport cars F1 etc to be fully insured!!

Fill out the survey & protest.

Yep, typical liberal luvvies in a room making up a rule without thinking through the consequences. They then make it a directive and only when the ship hits the fan do they think, oh! We did not think of that!

^ as above.

Done, but...
many questions are confusing, the whole process seems to be "we're going to do it - how do you us to implement it?"
DVLA are (arguable) not fit for purpose, most driver & vehicle records have errors, attempting to extending the existing DVLA system to motorsport & off-road cars/bikes is madness.
Explain how you will identify an uninsured driver of an off-road car/bike/quad when they do a hit & run when you're parked in a dodgy area?
Insuring all "hidden" Classic cars/bikes/barnfinds/restoration projects/bare bike frames/stripped car chassis will generate how much £££ ?
Penalties for failure to insure will raise £££ ?
Loss of motorsport & off-road industries will stop enjoyment for how many people?
I ride an off-road bike at a local track, bike is competition-only (cannot be made road-legal), the track owner insures the site - explain why it needs more insurance? If I decide to strip it a take a couple of years to restore it ... why insure it when it's in pieces etc.

Thanks for hilighting the consultation - I wasn't aware of it.

"A directive is a legal act of the European Union, which requires member states to achieve a particular result without dictating the means of achieving that result."

What exactly does the directive say exactly? If it is precisely "third party insurance required in respect of a range of vehicles, including non-road going vehicles and vehicles used on private land." Then the "range of vehicles" part of it is the bit where they can add in "for those currently paying VED" or whatever so as to not have to worry about the issue. Most of our tractors etc. are registered and used on roads, I suspect in various other EU member states that isn't true and accidents when these invariably get driven on the road would be uninsured, which is what the directive is likely trying to cover. I'd like to read the actual thing though, sometimes these are worded very badly.

Our own government's ham fisted, short sighted implementation of European directives is one of the things that poisons the debate around EU stuff, most of the crappy rules we have "because of the EU" are based on our own governments implementations of directives such as this, they are effectively free to do as they please in implementation. Maybe some of our German friends can tell us if the large motorsports industry in Germany is having the same issues, and if they are how they are proposing to fight it?

In the mean time, Survey should be filled out, hopefully no material change to domestic legislations. I suspect now is not the time to gut our motorsports and engineering prowess in the UK, but you never know with our governments, they aren't blessed with long term vision.

I have responded. However, it took me the best part of two hours to complete the survey as best I could, reading the material available.
An awful survey, and difficult to answer and make clear objections that relate to motorsport and to restorations.

This sounds like a done deal already, and a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. As "Hotwire" said, a farm worker injured by a tractor on a farm doing farm things - this should already have insurance in place - the business operator should have liability insurance that would already cover an incident like this. Putting the onus on the vehicle owner is wrong here. Had it been, say, a wheelbarrow that was fully laden and lost control, then what? Or a piece of machinery that had gone awry and knocked the chap off the ladder... Industrial accident in the workplace.

There isn't an epidemic of people being injured across Europe by uninsured vehicles, and where there is an issue the laws are already in place to mitigate (for example with normal road usage), it is people breaking those laws that cause the problem (uninsured drivers). Forcing insurance onto people does not and will not change anything in this case - motorsport events etc carry their own public liability insurance (or should) so to me, the route of compensation is clear. As for SRON and restoration projects, unless you drop one on someone then there really is not going to be an issue. Where someone is injured by your restoration project (somehow??) there, again, is already a clear set of civil laws that would cover this.

What I WOULD welcome is cyclists, mobility scooters and other currently uninsured road users being made to have third party insurance. That is something that DOES need to change.

Isn't it just. I had to switch off all my "Bantz", tell the Bantersaurus Rex to leave the room and even called the Arch Bishop of Banterbury to cancel my appointment later so that I could get my head into properly serious mode... Now I feel empty, cold, and the whole world seems a washed out shade of grey... I don't like having to do serious things. But while I have my dander up and I'm on to doing serious stuff and my head is in the right headspace...


I notice that there's a few things in there about mobility scooters, now I am about to go and Google it (because Google is where all the knowledge lives), but is there already a system in place for mobility scooters with insurance ect?

I also wonder in implementation if, as I mentioned, liability insurance in place covering the event organiser would suffice? When towing, your car insurance *should* cover the towed load (provided you are legal) on a third party basis (I'm thinking zombie pedestrians here walking into the road looking at their phone not spotting the overhang from your lowloader you are dragging then suing the bejesus out of you), and once safely back in your workshop / lockup / whatever, then provided your building is insured there's a liability element there I would think? I wonder if simply clarification of the various cover that is already there would actually sew up all the gaps?

For agriculture, as I said there should already be public liability in place, as with any business that is within the public realm... So surely that is cover enough?

I also don't understand all this "derogating" stuff. Surely that is the "fix" - simply classify a vehicle as not requiring insurance and job done?

Now, this bit seems to be good news:

"...the proposed approach seeks to effectively exclude the activities listed above from the scope of
the Motor Insurance Directive. In the absence of compulsory policies covering these activities at EU
level, the scope of the Motor Insurance Directive should be limited to the use of vehicles in the context
of traffic"

BUT

"The use in traffic could mean where the use of a vehicle is for the transport of persons or goods
whether stationary or in motion, in areas where the public has access in accordance with national law" - so not just roads.


It does sound as though they are going for option "3" though...

"We are satisfied that in pursuing option 3 we will do so in such a way as to meet our obligations in terms of
transposing the Directive, and will not amount to gold-plating."

So get ready for dodgems cars carrying car insurance LOL LOL LOL

You might want to have two swirls...

I'd love to see the original wording of the directive, I'll have a look later and see if I can find it. The problems with directives is that they are up to the implementing nation to interpret as works for them, so you get countries that implement them in really strict/deep ways, and others in vague ways, however this is a governmental issue rather than explicitly an issue with the directive themselves. However some directives are really poorly written and either leave no room for interpretation or far too much room, or occasionally make little to no sense. The only things as (current) members of the EU that we must put word for word into law are EU Regulations, directives are always open to interpretation. The worst that can happen is poor implementation can be taken to the ECJ, which I'm guessing would be an exercise in futility for the UK at the moment. As I say, depends on exact wording of directive as far as I'm concerned, but then I'm not a lawyer