What law does this refer to?

[donkmeister]

Someone above mentioned it's a 5 tonne van. I read a while back that 7.2 tonne vans are becoming more popular because they have a bigger usable payload than a 7.5 tonne lorry, and the article made the bold claim that 7.5 tonne lorries are almost unheard of in some parts of Europe because they are basically just de-rated 12-tonners.

I seem to recall the reasons for the greater usable payload were:
1) monocoque construction of a van is lighter than the body-on-chassis construction of a lorry.
2) modern lorry engines and gearboxes are over-engineered for 7.5 tonne usage (and correspondingly heavy), and modern van engines and gearboxes can pull that sort of load.

As to the original question, 3.5-7.5 tonne goods vehicles are in a situation where the maximum speed limit on a motorway is 70mph, but by law they need to be limited to 56mph. The limiter rule came in around 2005, and there was a plan to revise the speed limits back in 2008 but as far as I am aware this never took place.

See S7.6 onwards of this http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/142/pdfs/u...

[donkmeister]

PorkInsider said:

4rephill said:

The actual law that covers speed limiters on this type of vehicle is EU law (Directive 2002/85/EC):

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2002/85/pdfs/e...

Where's the 56mph bit in there?

Being a euro-document it's given as 90kph - if you look for instances of "90" you'll find it.