DfT wants a new motorcycle emissions law, but admits it has no evidence to justify them
The Government wants to extend an existing emissions law to motorcycles, despite the DfT admitting it has no evidence showing that bikes need to be brought under the rules.
The Department for Transport wants to change the law to bring motorcycles under an existing set of emissions rules.
There's just one fairly significant problem: it can't provide the evidence showing that motorcycles actually need to be included.
That's the rather baffling position emerging from the DfT's consultation on changes to Regulation 61A of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1988.
The proposed change would extend the rules to cover motorcycles, scooters, mopeds and other category L vehicles. The basic idea is that vehicles should continue to meet the emissions requirements that applied when they were built and registered, right up until the end of their life.
On the face of it, that sounds fairly reasonable. Nobody is suggesting that your old Euro 3 bike should suddenly have to meet Euro 5+ emissions limits. The DfT does, though, expect that a bike built to Euro 3, Euro 4 or Euro 5 regulations should maintain those standards, regardless of condition or modifications.
That final point is the important one for many of us, as these regulations, if and when they are imposed, could make lots of very common modifications to bikes effectively illegal.
Things like decat pipes, exhaust changes and engine maps. If it makes the bikes' exhaust emissions increase past the point they were at when the bike was produced, you could fall foul of the new rules.
It also draws older bikes into question. As a bike ages, the systems designed to maintain its emission standards could begin to deteriorate, many times without the rider even noticing. We could be riding around on non-compliant bikes without ever really knowing it.
But the question being asked by the Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) is a rather different but no less important one. MAG wants to know why the DfT think motorcycles need to be brought into this law in the first place.
And when MAG asked the DfT for the evidence behind the new proposal, the answer wasn't exactly what you’d call satisfying.
The DfT has acknowledged that it has limited analytical evidence specific to in-use motorcycle emissions. MAG has subsequently established that the Department does not have the analysis or evidence it was asked to provide to justify including motorcycles in Regulation 61A.
For anyone who rides a motorcycle in the UK, that's likely to prompt a fairly obvious question.
If there's no evidence showing that motorcycles need this new legal treatment, why the hell is the Government proposing it?
What is Regulation 61A?
Regulation 61A is an existing part of UK vehicle law dealing with the use of vehicles whose emissions-control systems have been tampered with or modified. It’s the reason cars and other vehicles get their exhausts ‘sniffed’ during an MOT.
The DfT's proposed changes are intended to strengthen the rules around vehicles continuing to meet the emissions requirements applicable to them when they were manufactured.
At present, the regulation doesn't cover category L vehicles, which includes motorcycles, scooters and mopeds. That’s the thing that the DfT wants to change – despite seemingly not having any evidence to support doing so.
Confused? Yeah, me too.
And for clarity, this isn't a proposal to impose the latest Euro emissions standard on every motorcycle already on the road. A Euro 3 motorcycle isn’t going to have to suddenly meet Euro 5+ limits simply because the law changes.
That would be unreasonable, even by DfT standards.
Instead, the relevant benchmark would remain the emissions standard that applied when the individual motorcycle was built and registered.
So what's the problem?
The DfT's argument is essentially that motorcycles have the potential to produce excess emissions, but instead of finding data that proves that and therefore warrants their inclusion, the DfT’s approach is more brutal.
Its view is that it hasn't identified a good reason to leave them outside Regulation 61A, so it may as well bundle them in there.
It’s a bit like a teacher deciding to punish the whole school with a detention because none of the students could prove they didn't misbehave.
What does this mean for UK bikers
There is a perfectly understandable argument for preventing people from deliberately removing emissions-control equipment from vehicles. It’s there for a reason and does a legitimate job.
The much less straightforward question is whether motorcycles need to be brought under this particular piece of legislation when the Government can't demonstrate the scale of the motorcycle-specific problem it is trying to solve.
The proposal could apply to motorcycles already on British roads, potentially reaching back through several generations of emissions standards. It could therefore affect already modified bikes, used motorcycles and the people who buy and sell them.
And the DfT doesn't appear to have produced detailed evidence showing how many motorcycles could be caught by the change or what its wider impact would be.
The consultation closed on 6 September, so the next step is for the DfT to consider the responses before deciding whether and how to proceed. For now, though, the central question remains a remarkably simple, and as yet unanswered, one.
Why is the DfT looking to fix something that it can't show is actually broken?
If you want a deeper understanding of this, the Mag piece goes into a lot more detail; you can find that on the official website.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
