Anyone done a B+E (car + trailer) test?

flat-6

flat-6

flat-6

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If you passed your test after 1st Jan 1997 you can only tow a trailer under 750kg or a car and trailer combo under 3500kg with a standard licence. This excludes towing a loaded car transporter and a caravan of any size.

The test for this is £105 (midweek) or £125 weekend! I would be gutted if I coughed up for this and failed. The chances that trafpol even know about these specific laws seem unlikely but I suppose the main problem is insurance in the event of an accident.

Anyone done it?
 
flat-6 said:
I. The chances that trafpol even know about these specific laws seem unlikely but I suppose the main problem is insurance in the event of an accident.
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Trafpol certainly do know about it, it's one of their bread an butter items (licence entitlements), any that don't shouldn't be dealing with traffic stuff as it's about as basic as it gets ;) (construction and use gets harder, especially with limo's etc from what i hear).

If you are going to be pulling trailers then go for the test after some training, it's not massively hard from memory, and if you're involved in an accident whilst pulling a trailer without the right category on your licence you'll be screwed by the insurance company and probably done for driving without insurance if the police get involved (IIRC your insurance is only fully valid if you are within the limits of your licence).
 
Yes i have done it

Did it three times passed twice failed once dont ask lol

My instructor was telling me the story of an accident where a woman crashed in to a car towing a horse box .It was the womans fault .But the car towing the horse the driver didnt have a a B+E on and was towing illegally .The woman took the towing driver to court even though it was her fault and won.

she argued that the towing driver shouldnt have been on the road and hence she wouldnt have crashed .

Thats what he told me anyways
 
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R@tman said:
My instructor was telling me the story of an accident where a woman crashed in to a car towing a horse box .It was the womans fault .But the car towing the horse the driver didnt have a a B+E on and was towing illegally .The woman took the towing driver to court even though it was her fault and won.

she argued that the towing driver shouldnt have been on the road and hence she wouldnt have crashed
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Fabrication, this wouldnt have happened like that.
 
flat-6 said:
If you passed your test after 1st Jan 1997 you can only tow a trailer under 750kg or a car and trailer combo under 3500kg with a standard licence. This excludes towing a loaded car transporter and a caravan of any size

Anyone done it?
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You don't need to take the test to tow a caravan aslong as the car is heavier than the caravan and the total weight is less than 3.5tonnes. This is what the dvla informed me as we are looking at getting a caravan plus I tow a track car every so often. There is a leaflet on the dvlas webpage that covers it
 
All the info is here:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/DriverLicensing/CaravansTrailersCommercialVehicles/DG_4022521

Pretty hard to imagine a car + car transporter with a track car on it that is less this:

If you passed a car test on or after 1 January 1997 you're limited to vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes maximum authorised mass towing a trailer up to 750kgs, or a vehicle and trailer combination up to 3.5 tonnes MAM providing the MAM of the trailer doesn't exceed the unladen mass of the towing vehicle.

@R@tman - you spent >£300 on trailer tests?

As for trafpol - you think they cruise by looking to see if the driver looks younger than 29?
 
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I can't link to the page with PDF of the leaflet as I am posting from a phone however it gives an example of towing a 1.25 trailer with a car with a total weight under 3.5t is ok. The track car and trailer weigh about 1.1t and the car about 1.6t so under the limits.
 
Form is http://www.dvla.gov.uk/media/pdf/leaflets/inf30.pdf , look at the example under the B category.

I called the DVLA to clarify if a caravan is treated differently to a trailer and they said no and that I could tow a 1.3 ton caravan with my girlfriends 1.6 ton Zafira they then sent me a copy of the leaflet above.

You only need B + E if for example you have a 2.5 ton car and wanted to tow a 1.8 ton trailer.
 
R@tman said:
Yes i have done it

Did it three times passed twice failed once dont ask lol

My instructor was telling me the story of an accident where a woman crashed in to a car towing a horse box .It was the womans fault .But the car towing the horse the driver didnt have a a B+E on and was towing illegally .The woman took the towing driver to court even though it was her fault and won.

she argued that the towing driver shouldnt have been on the road and hence she wouldnt have crashed .

Thats what he told me anyways
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Must have been a big fat horse for them to be over the limit pulling one in a horse box :D
 
My parents have a behemoth Caravan (Hymer Nova) which is 1350kg unladen but rated at 1700kg laden which is the value you calculate it with. Currently my dad uses his 2000 A6 TDI to tow it and that is barely big enough/powerful enough for the job. If he gets some kid of SUV or van to tow it I guess I'd have to get the licence for that :(
 
Davey D said:
Must have been a big fat horse for them to be over the limit pulling one in a horse box :D
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A big ish horse weighs about a ton, a horse box weighs on its own around a ton plus a jeep to tow it and its quite easy to go over the 3.5 ton limit. I couldn't tow a horse box for a friend due to this as a Q7 plus horse box plus horse was almost 5 tons :eek:
 
Oh that's interesting. What if the weight of the trailer + load goes over the max towing weight of the car. I presume that's not allowed. Citreon only put a tonne (braked) in the book for the xsara estate (same as a 206!) the swines! An mgb might be a little heavy to be safe though.
 
flat-6 said:
All the info is here:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/DriverLicensing/CaravansTrailersCommercialVehicles/DG_4022521

Pretty hard to imagine a car + car transporter with a track car on it that is less this:

If you passed a car test on or after 1 January 1997 you're limited to vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes maximum authorised mass towing a trailer up to 750kgs, or a vehicle and trailer combination up to 3.5 tonnes MAM providing the MAM of the trailer doesn't exceed the unladen mass of the towing vehicle.

@R@tman - you spent >£300 on trailer tests?


As for trafpol - you think they cruise by looking to see if the driver looks younger than 29?
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No my employer did

Test 1 Had to use father inlaws car Shogun Auto and his horse box
Because Instrutors car was brand new and didnt have the
bleeping indicators due to a fault. i failed that test didnt indicate
to go round a cyclist.

Test 2 Booked this my self using my inlaws shgun automatic and there
horse box . I Passed Whoo however becuase it was in a auto car
i could only tow with a auto even though i had a manual licence
" I DID ASK THE INSTRUCTOR THIS" he said i wont matter as you
have a manual licence How wrong he was .

Test 3 Instructor Paid for this one as he was at fault for my restricted
licence to towing with automatics . He provided the car and paid for
the test i provided the horsebox .
When we got to the test centre the examiner wouldnt take me out
as he didn't think the Astra Estate could pull the horse box so he got
vospa to come look and they said it was just legal empty so the
test went ahead and i passed and got my manual licence for towing

hard work though
 
just checked my licence and I don't think I'm even alowed to drive a campervan! any idea about this guys? passed in like 2001-2002
 
Luckily I passed my car test in '96 and got the B+E and C1, C1+E entitlements!

It's one of my pet hates that things like this aren't covered in much detail (if at-all) when people are first learning to drive, afterall, things have been set up like this for 11 years now and still most people are completely unaware that they can't legally drive some vehicles that older people can.

I was stopped by a traffic patrol on the M18 early this year purely so that he could check I had entitlement to drive the minibus I was in, a 16-seater. Anyone who passed their test after '96 can only drive upto 8 passenger seats without having to do a small bus test, which again, something that most people are completely unaware of.
 
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