Paging the MOTisti

No

-- Dave Baker

Ok, cheers.

-- JackH

No. They've got to be secure though.

John

as said in previous posts as long as they are secure then thats ok, *but* & a big BUT if the tester cannot gain reasonable access to the rear ( because the seats wont tip forward) to fully check the rear seatbelts & backrests for secruity, as *all* seat backrests must be secure (front & back) then thats a different story........but today im not testing as ive got the the day off.

What about cars where the front seats aren't latched down by design? I'm sure I've had or driven one or two like that.

Meant to say: The last one without latches I remember was a Mk 1 Cortina. Girlfriend upended to the windscreen in a hasty stop once. (No seat belts in them thar days). DaveK.

Been there - my car's seat has got jammed twice - in both cases when coins fell out of pockets into the release mechanism. At least fixing it (highly technical - unbolt seat, invert, shake) is one of the rare occasions where you can make a profit from fixing something in your car.

Andy

Good grief, you must be nearly as old as me!

Before front seat belts were a legal requirement, most seats tipped forward with no latch. I've no idea how that would be regarded for the MOT though.

First one that springs to mind is the early Mini.

Chris

Mine came with a pair of enormous, releasable cable ties that the previous owner used to fit before taking the car for an MOT. I've never bothered and it's never raised so much as a comment.

original design characteristics & specialised modifications( eg to enable wheelchair access) are to be accepted, which includes as you say some older vehicles have seats that dont latch down.

they pivot from the front of the seat base, not the back so they will not tip under braking.

Yeah, right LOL

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "a.n.other" saying something like:

F*ck, do you know anything about what you spout bollocks on?

No, they certainly can tip under braking.

Where they were designed like that (you must surely be talking about pre-1970s cars - I have a few), then it is permissible. Later on seats were fitted with latches to fix them down, to reduce the risk of the seat helping to catapult the driver through the windscreen in an accident.