Bought a trailer, turned out to be dangerous.

[TooMany2cvs]

Variomatic said:

Agreed, although it does raise the small conundrum of why have laws (in this case SOGA and possibly part of the RTA) if no one bothers to have them enforced. All the arguments about "no point" would disappear - along with most of the dodgy sellers - if enforcement was the norm!

You do know that breaches of SOGA are civil, not criminal, so "enforcement" isn't the jib of the Police, but down to you making a claim in court?

[Variomatic]

TooMany2cvs said:

You do know that breaches of SOGA are civil, not criminal, so "enforcement" isn't the jib of the Police, but down to you making a claim in court?

Err, yes, I do know that.

You do know that breaches of the Road Traffic Act, including:

S. 75 Vehicles Not To Be Sold in Unroadworthy Condition or Altered So As To Be Unroadworthy.

are criminal, not civil, so once reported to the police should be recorded, investigated, and either resolved or left as an unsolved crime on their statistics?

Since the trailer was clearly altered to be unroadworthy, and was also sold in that condition, they actually have 2 crimes to investigate: (1) who carried out the alteration and (2) can the seller claim one of the statutory defences to the crime of selling it like that?

Since "I didn't know it was like that" isn't a defence, that second one should be a nice easy one for them to wrap up with a conviction

[handpaper]

Vaud said:

And in this case raises the question about why trailers and caravans shouldn't be subject to an MOT that would at least reduce the number of unroadworthy lumps of towed metal that are common on the roads.

While I am completely behind requiring MoT for all types of trailer and caravan, I don't think this would have been picked up. As far as I can see, disassembly would have been required to spot it and MoT testers aren't allowed to do that.

[Vaud]

handpaper said:

While I am completely behind requiring MoT for all types of trailer and caravan, I don't think this would have been picked up. As far as I can see, disassembly would have been required to spot it and MoT testers aren't allowed to do that.

Fair point.

[Silver Smudger]

Vaud said:

handpaper said:

While I am completely behind requiring MoT for all types of trailer and caravan, I don't think this would have been picked up. As far as I can see, disassembly would have been required to spot it and MoT testers aren't allowed to do that.

Fair point.

Unless the test centre was over a mile from home ...

[silentbrown]

Silver Smudger said:

Unless the test centre was over a mile from home ...

You could trailer your trailer to the test centre, surely.