Taxi Driver Online

Wedding and funeral cars should not be put under same rules as taxis, Law Commission said


VINTAGE wedding car businesses are celebrating after winning the first stage of their fight against red tape.

Changes to the law could have meant wedding and funeral cars being controlled by local authorities – which would force them to be subjected to the same controls as taxis and private hire vehicles.




sexy: Suzie Goodman of wedding car business Karma Kars Cotswold

But the Law Commission has now recommended the vehicles can retain their statutory exemption from the new licensing laws.

Suzie Goodman, who runs Karma Kars Cotswold, was one of the businesses which could have been affected.

She rents out her 12-year-old Indian Ambassador cars, based on the 1950s British classic the Morris Oxford, for weddings.

The mum-of-two from Charlton Kings said: "I am very pleased and this really is a step in the right direction.

"Potentially the change of law could have meant a lot of people just giving up. We don't work like taxis, doing 70,000 miles a year or working 40 hours a week, and so it would not have been right to classify them as taxis.

"If they agree with the recommendation, it will mean brides and grooms will still have a lot of choice having weird, wonderful and classic cars to rent out for their special day."

The 38-year-old used Twitter to let people know about the proposed changes and urged them to sign a petition, put together by the National Association of Wedding Car Professionals, to fight the changes.

Clive Rooke has run Nostalgia Wedding Cars based in Down Hatherley for 20 years, hiring out his fleet of six cars across Gloucestershire and beyond.

He was one of those willing to add his name to the petition.

"It really would have hit hard and so we signed the petition against it," he added.

"The industry joined together and so, hopefully, this will be successful.

"The last thing we wanted to do was penalise people further on their wedding days and it would have meant us putting up our prices."

The National Association of Wedding Car Professionals was set up to fight the proposals.

In a statement, it said: "Before we break out the champagne, remember the minister has the right to ignore the Law Commission and go ahead with the original proposal but I sincerely doubt this will happen.

"It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas."


Read more: http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/ ... z2QjiIwt50

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

But who checks for safety?

And why is someone taking punters from A to B for payment different from someone else taking punters from A to B for payment?

If the LC are proposing exempting wedding cars, then why are they not exempting everyone else?

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IDFIMH

A blue moon! I Agree!

tripe

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

On post-1960 cars the annual test checks for safety; for pre 1960 cars, they're exempt from annual testing so in theory nobody checks them.

I see both sides of the argument; why should the owner of a 1936 Thimberly Ditsun have to let his car be licenced to the same standards as a 2013 car? Simply the current rules don't allow it in many cases due to the LA's insistence on having a maximum vehicle age. There's also quite a few left hand drive cars out there used for weddings that could not be licenced as many LA's will not licence lhd cars!

If the LC changes include a maximum age, then cars pre- that age could not be licenced anyway, so you'd have the same situation you have now! In my view I have no problem with owners of old cars using them for the occasional wedding providing they are properly licenced and insured for hire and reward.

I was one of those who were consulted about the exemption for annual testing for pre-1960, which came into effect in October last year. I had serious reservations as did a substantial number of professional restorers, especially regarding the continues use of historic buses without an annual test. However, the accident and MoT test results showed that most of these vehicles do very little milage a year, are well maintained and offer little risk to anyone. It's also the government's policy to cut down on red tape (believe it or not).

There may be a good case for licencing cars that are regularly used for funerals as they are out every day of the week, much the same as a taxi or ph car. But then again speeds are generally low and the accident risk is also low. After all, nobody wants a funeral or wedding car to break down going to or from the happy or sad event.

What constitutes "occasional"? We started out with a Rolls Royce and a Jaguar for "Occasional" weddings. We had classic car insurance for the Rolls Royce, there was no information on what constituted "classic". The insurance was fully comp and the premium was around £250 per year. The policy covered social domestic and pleasure use and unlimited wedding use. So in theory this car could do weddings 7 days a week.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

Try licencing it and see what barriers the LA come up with!

Look I must be missing something here.

Do we say to bus operators who run old buses that they don't need any safety checks on their vehicles or drivers?

Do we say to pilots that they don't need any checks on their old vintage airplanes?

Do we say to vintage railways that they don't need checks on their trains.

For f*** sake these things need more checks, not none.

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IDFIMH

yes..same goes for my granny.

They need to be checked. I suspect the majority of responsible wedding car operators would do a regular check anyway. But why should someone who only uses his 1927 car every few months need to have it specially licenced? That car would possibly be better maintained than yours or mine! I tend to agree that someone like Karma Cars ought to be licenced with the volume of work they're doing.

If Joe public's going to be conveyed in them for cash they need to tested for safety, and it seems the only way to do this is to licence them...where's the problem?

There isn't. I run a 60 year old bus on weddings; that does not need to be tested; it carries people for hire and reward. It is insured to carry people for hire and reward. I am licenced to drive buses for hire and reward.

The fact that it used to be tested annually and now isn't doesn't make it any more dangerous to the fare-paying public. Part of my opertors licence condition is that my vehicles undergo a routine preventative maintenance inspection every 8 weeks.

On a vintage bus that does about 5000 miles a year that's a bit over the top in my view, but that's what the licence says, so that's what happens. It's no problem. If the bus is SORN, the paperwork gets filled in saying SORN, not inspected. BUT it gets inspected when it comes off SORN and before it's let back on the road again.

What I have found is that those who used to do the inspection at VOSA were generally unfamiliar with the workings of older vehicles and didn't know what they were looking at. the same could be said for the MoT testing stations and private garages that do cab compliance checks. You'll find a lot of the test items listed on the check sheet are not fitted to the car and there's no requirement to have them retro fitted.

I once took a 1926 Dennis open-top bus for a class 6 PSV test; it had a current Certificat of Initial Fitness for carrying passengers for hire and reward. It had no electric start; brakes on the rear wheels only; no electric lighting; no windscreen; no indicators; no roof; wooden seats; no ABS; no cab front; and the petrol tank was immediately in front of the driver. So very little to test. None of the VOSA testers knew much about it, so they passed it anyway. There was nothing inherently dangerous about it. It just took a lot of skill to drive.

A test certificate is not even worth the paper it's written on as anything can fail as you drive out of the test centre.

I'd suggest that any firm or individual who advertises wedding cars for hire ought to be licenced, but odd individuals who may get asked a couple of times a year to use their classic car for a wedding, well, why bother? It's too much hassle for little or no rewrad, and you risk spoiling someone's special day for the sake of unnneccesary paperwork which the government "says" it's trying to cut down on.

The line has to be drawn somewhere. After how many weddings a year does it become necessary to be licensed? Then there is the increasing problem of the owner who doesn't know the law who is asked by his neighbour to use his classic car to take the girls to the school prom or to take great grandma and great granddad to their diamond weeding event. All of these things are happening now and have been for years.
You say that the vintage bus had no brakes on the front so they weren't tested. A horse and carriage has to have disc brakes fitted these days before it can be used for passengers, well the carriage does, not the horse.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

Plenty of horse and carriages/landaus here and im pretty sure never seen disc brakes

Look closer, I am perfectly willing to stand corrected but all the ones that I have seen on weddings over the past few years have had to have them. I asked one of the owners about it and it was him that told me that they have to be fitted.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5