Do the police actually have the power to detain my bike and check whether or not I have mousses in? I keep valves in my wheels and there is no obvious method of testing whether the tyres have mousses in them.
John
For those of you who missed the piece on the law of knobbly tyres, I was of the view that mousses, whilst useful, did not meet the construction and use tests and are therefore, technically, illegal. John asks the question “so, will I be caught?”.
The police do have the power to stop you for any reason, but being mindful not to be accused of harassment, they usually record one, such as asking you to produce documents. For a bike which has been out on the lanes it could be to stop you to tell you that your number plate is obscured, and at this point you have the ‘attitude test’.
If you are pulled over by ordinary car (i.e. not a police pursuit vehicle) and the officer gets out of the car wearing a black rather than a white cap then the reality is that whilst they have exactly the same powers as a road traffic officer, with one exception relating to high speed pursuits, they are unlikely to be fully versed in road traffic law. Obviously, they will know that you need to be displaying a number plate and the police national computer check will soon reveal whether or not your bike is insured and taxed. All constables have a working knowledge of road traffic law.
If you catch a road traffic officer on a bad day and you are running your bike on mousses you could be in for a significant amount of inconvenience, but not a huge amount of difficulty.
If the officer thinks that your tyres are suspicious and he puts a pressure gauge on them, a tyre with mousses will read zero. The police officer would then have grounds for impounding the vehicle as, in his opinion, it would be dangerous to take on the road. The tyre itself is unlawful under the construction and use regulations. The police officer would be well within his rights then to take the for further examination, either by an officer authorised for vehicle inspection, or another suitably qualified civilian vehicle examiner to explain this mysterious 0 psi. The police officer would be using his powers in a way which a magistrates’ court would find reasonable.
Depending on the mood of the officer, he could either impound the vehicle there and then, tell you that if you moved the bike again you would be committing a further road traffic offence, and if you started the bike up he would nick you for a further offence of taking a vehicle onto a road with defective tyres. He could tell you to have the vehicle recovered, or he could issue you with a vehicle rectification notice. Whichever way he does it, he can make your life difficult. If he does not have a tyre pressure gauge then there is no obvious defect on the machine, the machine is not objectively dangerous, and he would have no such powers. In short, you take a calculated risk when you ride a bike on the road or the byways with mousses.
The chances of an officious police officer having the knowledge and equipment to make a charge stick are small. However, if you combine mousses with a small and illegal number plate, a bad attitude, a noisy pipe, and inconsiderate riding, then you make yourself ‘nick-bait’ and being nickbait is best avoided.
Andrew Dalton
Adventure Bike Rider March/April 2017
I will be doing a bit of the Northern Spanish TET, the Portuguese TET and returning along the Portuguese ACT in the early autumn of 2021, covid and regulations permitting. In answer to your question though, I am as sure as I can be that mousses are illegal in every EU country as well as just about every other country as there is a UN Treaty which sets out the requirements for tyres – and mousses are, probably more by accident than design, excluded. Hopefully you are okay doing a road side inner tube change. My inner tube change kit is the Motion Pro lever and bead breaker, the Baja no pinch tools and a motion pro tyre lever with 32mm and 22mm socket inserts and a standard 21″ inner tube. Hand sanitiser as mounting lube with a valve pull through and a couple of spare Schrader valves and a motorcycle inner tube patch kit. I bought a little battery powered pump which took up 1/4 of its charge to get my 18″ rear up to 22 psi. That lot sticks about 4kg on my all up weight. I have made a point of getting slicker at doing inner tube swaps – buying an old MX 18 wheel and practicing putting on the stiff side wall tyres most of us use for enduro/light adventure touring. That Baja No pinch tool, whilst awkward to pack makes even very stiff side wall tyres easy to get on. No help at all though getting the buggers off. I can see the attractions of Tubliss if you are not too far away from civilisation but having done the Nordic TET in 2019 I took the view I needed to have a spare inner tube and as I was carrying a tyre change kit what was the point of Tubliss for me? But Tubliss would save you about 3kg of kit – you’d still need a plug kit and a pump. The problem for me with Tubliss is that if you get a biggish puncture then you cannot plug it – but as I lump my tyre change kit on my bike, I can see the attraction!
Hi. I’m doing the tet in northern Spain next year all being well. I can’t find any information to see if the law is the same there. Please can you help. Thank you very much. Stuart