Legality of carrying a passenger in a 109

Best bet is to phone the DVLA, the rules are a bitch to figure out, and just when you reckon you've got it sorted, some doubt gets thrown on it.

Insurance might be the best starting point, mine says that I'm insured to carry as many people as the vehicle was designed to carry, 14 seats in my case, may not apply to you if your vehicle was built as a two-seater.

All the guff about seats in the back, bench seats, which ones need seatbelts, how many people you can carry on your license and so forth change over the years, but your entitlement and the vehicles hasn't, so what can and can't be done appears to depend largely on the age of the vehicle, what it was intended to be used for and when you got your license.

I spent three whole days tracking down what I could do with mine, talking to various government departments, and ended up talking to the civil servant who drafted the regs in the first place, who told me I could use the bench seats (standardised bench seats within specific measurement ranges defined in the regs, 406mm wide), didn't need to fit seatbelts due to vehicle age (pre '88), and could drive it without a specific license due to the time I took my license out...

So basically, you might be able to get away with it simply by adding a rudimentary bench seat within the set sizes.. But maybe not if the vehicle was originally built as a pickup!

Phone the DVLA, who will tell you to phone Construction and Use, who will tell you to phone DVLA, then throw a hissy fit and ask to speak to Gareth Evans in the DVLA, who will tell you C&U should have given you the info, sigh deeply and give you the info himself ;-)

thrown

insured

forth

without

But even if you get that statement over the 'phone, you will need it confirmed in writing if you have to rebuff a challenge - no good saying - "well they told me" !

AWEM

Not really, because they're guiding you through the law as it is, that's all, not giving you special permission.

Isn't this another case of 'people' thinking that there must be a law when, in fact, there isn't?

Insurance issues apart - and 'hire and reward' and carriage of children situations I don't think that passengers are mentioned anywhere. There are seat belt requirements for passengers sitting on front seats, children sitting on seats but nothing else that I can recall.

It may not be nice or even, in some circumstances, sensible to carry unseated passengers but it may not be illegal: if it is there are a huge number of law breakers around.

Nope, there are regulations governing seatbelts being fitted to all seats, the legality of side facing seats, and all sorts of other stuff.

It depends, I can legally seat 12 people on bench seats in the rear of mine with no seatbelts, I wouldn't want to especially as it's all metal in the rear, but it's legal. If I bought the new version of my truck, it wouldn't be legal despite the fitments being identical as the truck would be manufactured after 1988.

So the "lawbreakers" you think might exist might in fact be lawbreakers, or they might be in a vehicle that's old enough to do it within the law.

There are indeed laws about seat belts and seats, but there's nothing in the recont legislation about seat belts when there are no seats to start with - specifically. There are rules about carrying passengerin vans too, but nothing about pick-ups (or so I'm led to believe by a Series I owning copper). Theres's all sorts of laws that could be used to stop you doing it, as with anything else.

I was under the impression that the inward facing seat and seat belts rules has no cut-off date, i.e if fitted they must always have belts. Could be an interpretation issue though tied in with children though, as with all current carefully considered legislation ;-)

Richard

I was thinking of cases where there were no seats. No seat, therefore no seat belt needed. You don't need seats to carry passengers - wheelboxes or the floor do fine: bring your own padding.

I wasn't aware of the 'no passengers in vans' that Richard mentioned. What is a van? Would it a seatless 88/90/109/110 be included? Dual purpose vehicle get-out clause?

Oh right, sorry, didn't quite get you there.

I'd check with the insurance company first. My insurance company states that I'd be covered for as many people as the vehicle was designed to hold, I've not picked through the legalese to see if they have to be in seats or not but I'd be surprised if they didn't think of that, they do like their non-payment excuses after all.

Then I'd still phone the DVLA to see if they can give any info, given that on a vehicle prior to a certain age, it's quite possible to slap a padded board down with some screws and call it a bench seat and be entirely within the law.

One of the questions I specifically asked the DVLA chap was about the side-facing bench seats and the lack of seatbelts, he said that pre

1988, a vehicle with side-facing bench seats doesn't need seatbelts if they weren't there when it was made. All of this was on 19th July 2006, that's a lot of days for new red tape to be wound round our necks I suppose!

On or around Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:54:49 +0100, Dougal enlightened us thusly:

almost all the seat belt stuff has a get-out to the effect that it's OK to carry people if no belts are available. remarkably sensible, in fact.

The big problems are children on organised trips, not necessarily for hire or reward, such as cubs going on an outing, for example. If they're all your kids, it's no problem anyway.

Thanks for everyone whe replied, though I can safely say it's as clear as mud now 8-). I can add that I'm not talking about carrying children, and my 109 is a hard top not a pickup etc and built in 1972 so exempt from a lot of the later laws. As to the number of passengers it was designed to carry, well that's absolutely any ones guess as the V5C is blank on almost everything including number of seats, and it's been modified considerably over the years. Greg