Laws affecting motorists that you might not have spotted
Chris Hogan, 9th February 2016, Motor
There was a lot of fuss and publicity, rightly so, about the recent changes to the UK driving licence and the disappearance of the tax disc. But there were a few other changes to the law later in 2015 that will affect motorists, even though most aren't changes to motoring laws.
So what are they?
Smoking with children in the car
This one is a change to motoring law, and we covered it in detail (here) when it was announced early last year. It came into force in October and since then it's been illegal to smoke in a car if anyone else is under the age of eighteen.
The offence carries a fixed penalty fine of £50 but it will be reduced by £20 if it's paid early. If you decide to challenge the ticket, go to court and are found guilty, the fine could be up to £200. It's not certain if anyone has been successfully prosecuted so far, but it's unlikely as it was reported that the police had been instructed not to prosecute offenders for the first three months, just educate them about the new law. That grace period is now over.
The only exceptions are for convertibles with the roof down and for seventeen-year-old drivers if they are on their own. The law doesn't cover electronic cigarettes and only applies to England and Wales, although Scotland and Northern Ireland may put similar laws into effect in the future.
Parking charge rule changes
We haven't heard anything about this one until now but apparently new rules for council-run car park enforcement came into force in 2015 as well, but only in England.
The main change was that a ten minute grace period now applies so that if you are delayed returning to you car but get there within ten minutes of your ticket expiring, you won't be charged a penalty.
BUT.... it's important to understand the restrictions - it only applies to council run car parks and on-street parking. It doesn't apply to many other situations like overstaying the time limit on single yellow lines or in permit bays. Nor does it apply to the time before a driver has a chance to find the right change, buy a ticket and put it on the windscreen - it only applies to over-staying at the end.
Still, the same legislation made it illegal for councils to use so-called 'spy cars' which drove round streets, snapping offenders and automatically issuing tickets in the post. Tickets will now have to be put on cars by parking wardens.
Thirty-day refund period
This isn't really about cars at all but the new Consumer Rights Act included legislation to enforce a compulsory refund for faulty goods as long as they were returned within 30 days. Now this could apply to almost anything (apart from food) sold on the high street or online, a computer, carpet, cooker - literally anything.
'Anything', of course includes cars. Whether they are bought secondhand or new, a dealer now has to take a car back and issue a full refund if it is faulty.
Up until now there has been a confusing situation with dealers being allowed to repair faults with cars rather than issue refunds and getting the dealer to comply was very tricky because the consumer would have to persuade the dealer to do the repairs.
In addition to the thirty-day full refund period, there's a six month limit within which dealers must repair faults and you can ask for a refund on the price of the car if the fault isn't fixed the first time around.
Dirty number plates
We'll end on one that isn't actually a legal change, more a change in enforcement. In the dim and distant past, if your number plate wasn't readable or had been mucked about with in some way, you'd probably get away with a ticking off. But the law was changed in 2001 to specifically make dirty number plates illegal because of the increasing use of automatic number plate recognition (APNR) technology.
It would be a complete waste of time and money for the police, highway authorities and private companies to install all these APNR cameras if we all drove round with muddy plates that defeated them, that's why the change. The new laws made it specifically an offence to obstruct the number plate in any way "which would prevent or impair the making of a true photographic image of the plate through the medium of camera and film or any other device".
But with the change from physical tax discs to online databases for MoT test, tax and insurance checks, the importance of APNR has multiplied significantly. So although there's been no legal change, and we're not aware of any instructions to the police to enforce the law more vigorously, it's very likely that more attention will be paid to dirty plates these days.
Roll on 2016
So what will greet us in 2016? So far we haven't heard of any more laws that will be coming out but if you know differently do please let us know.
