legal for bike to tow bike?

[gridgway]

I was joining the northbound A3 yesterday afternoon from the M25. It is often slow and messy here as the joning cars get their own lane and many cars from the then lane 2 are trying to get to lane 1 for the Cobham exit.

It was much more of a zoo than normal yesterday and when it cleared, I could see three motorbikes travelling together and one was towing another.

This made me wonder if it was legal as I have never seen a bike towed by another bike before.

Graham

[Fiskkeeper]

good question that. id guess it was as ive seen bikes with trailers in the past.

[gridgway]

I'd reckon that a bike towing a bike with a tow-rope might be different from towing a trailer?

Graham

[Fiskkeeper]

you could well be right, im guessing thats all. would be nice to find the answer out wouldnt it?

[gridgway]

yes indeed!! For one thing, where do you safely attach a towrope to a bike?

Graham

[GreenV8S]

I can't point to a statute to back this up, but as I understand it, where cars are concerned you can tow anything with anything in order to move it away from a danger to a place of safety. That includes towing cars which aren't roadworthy following an accident or breakdown.

Aside from that, if you tow one car behind another and both cars are road legal and have drivers then that is legal. If the towed car doesn't have a driver then it becomes a trailor with all the laws and restrictions that entails.

Obviously you can't tow a bike without a rider, so there's no possibility of the towed bike being considered a trailor. By analogy with cars, I guess it might be legal to tow a bike. As a non-biker I don't know if it would be safe but it sounds distinctly dangerous to me, in which case it would probably fall foul of more general 'due care and attention' type of laws.

[mel]

We often do it on Enduro bikes in the middle of nowhere as it's fairly common for one to run out of fuel before the others on a run in to a petrol station. It is legal and if done properly safe, the safest way is to take a strop from the front bikes left hand foot peg and run it to the rear bikes right hand foot peg, it can be fixed to the front bike but the rear rider would normally only wrap it round the peg once then put his foot on it, that way if anything gets hairy he can lift his foot and let the strop go. It's asking for trouble if you start tieing ropes up at headstock type level, but the method I've described I've even safely used off road with no problems.

[Fer]

As an aside I remember reading in BSH years ago that on some bikes you need to remove the chain, otherwise it runs the oil pump and can bust the engine. (But this was 18 years ago, so I could have remembered this completely wrong!)

[catso]

I've been towed on a bike by a car once after an engine failure, just a get-me-home job around 15 miles and it wasn't too scary.

But my brother-in-law got towed by another bike from Northern Germany to Florence, (Italy), after he broke down on the return leg of a bike tour of Scandinavia with a group of biker mates but then he's Italian........

what do you expect if you go touring on a 1970's 2-stroke?

[streaky]

Hopefully, DVD will be along shortly with Chapter and Verse - Streaky

[Dwight VanDriver]

You rang Streaky.......

MV (Con and Use) Regs 1986 Reg 84

M/C being used on a road may not:
tow more than one trailer,
draw a trailer carrying a passenger (unless broken down),
draw a trailer UW over 254 kgms.

A two wheeled motor cycle
not with sidecar,
engine not over 125cc
shall not draw a trailer except a broken down motor cycle being ridden.

Over 125cc may draw a trailer providing:
trailer does not exceed 1 metre wide
distance between rear axle of MC and rear of trailer does not exceed 2.5 metres.
MC to be marked with kerbside weight (unless broken down)
ULW to be marked on trailer (unless broken down)
Laden wight of trailer not to exceed 150 kg or two thirds kerbside weight of MC whichever the less (unless...yes.... broken down)

dvd