As the Transport and Tourism Committee of MEPs have now been presented with recommendations on how they should support an EU Super MoT, you may wish to contact your MEP…
The British Government is against the idea of adding further bureaucratic and financial burdens unnecessarily. The EU Presidency and Council of Ministers have said that motorcyclists shouldn’t be included in the proposal and 4 national parliaments have now voted against implementing it. It would be great if our MEPs accepted that there was no evidence for the proposal in its current form.
If this is the first time you’ve contacted your MEPs please note that you have more than one because the voting system for European elections is different to what we use in the UK for Westminster parliamentary elections.
MEPs from different parties are meant to represent you, so please consider writing to them all.
You can find all the contact details through the link below. Just click on the region of the map relevant to where you live. Feel free to write a letter or send an email
www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home
Dear
I am writing to raise my deep concern over current proposals that would raise the cost and complexity of the UK’s MoT test.
The Commission’s proposals for Road Worthiness Testing (Regulation COM2012/380) will require MoT stations to make considerable investment in training and test equipment to a different, but not better, standard than at present.
This and other aspects of the proposal threatens to put smaller local MoT stations out of business and make it harder to find a motorcycle MoT test station in rural areas. The UK’s record on vehicle defects, especially motorcycle defects, is already one of the best anywhere so there is no sense in putting it under needless pressure at a time when many small and medium size businesses are struggling to stay afloat.
The Proposal is for the harmonisation of roadworthiness testing systems, but this appears to be pursued as an end in itself with little road safety advantage for motorcycle users; several countries with a similarly very low rate of crashes involving motorcycle defects do not include motorcycles within their testing regimes at all.
There is no clear case for the harmonisation of motorcycle RWT in general and no case at all for the UK to adopt the proposed system in support of better motorcycle safety across the EU. The Commission relies on a single report by an organisation with considerable financial interest in expanding the RWT industry. The report claims that 8% of motorcycle accidents are attributable to component failures which could be avoided by periodic testing. The Council has found that these findings are ambiguous and bear no relation to other EU studies which typically find less than 1% of motorcycle crashes are directly caused by a defect and that no more than 5% of crashes have any relation to a defect.
The Council of Ministers’ have proposed to exclude motorcycles and reclassify the proposal as a Directive which would give each Member State far more control over the right course of action for their circumstances. For the UK, this would be beneficial in terms of cost and inconvenience when no discernible benefits have been identified.
Four national parliaments have voted against implementing this proposal, the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee and the DfT have rejected the proposals for motorcycles.
The representative body of motorcyclists in the UK, the Motorcycle Action Group, is calling on MEPs to take an interest in this subject and to make it clear to their colleagues on the TRAN committee that public opinion and the Council of Ministers are against needless change that threatens the interests of riders and business alike.
Yours Sincerely
xxxx
Don’t forget to include your address so that they know you live in their constituency.