The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has confirmed that after January 2013 there was a change to the licensing rules for towing trailers. The rule change applies to a person who takes out a B (Car) licence after 19 January, 2013.

The RSA has responded to our previous article and advises that if a driver wants to tow a trailer, there are two essential issues to be considered. The first one is what does your licence entitle you to drive? The second question relates to the towing capacity of the vehicle - what is your car allowed to tow?

The RSA says that both of these questions must be considered together. To give an example, if a driver holds a BE licence but is driving a car whose towing capacity is 500kg, then the driver cannot tow a trailer whose Maximum Authorised Mass (MAM) is greater than this while driving this car.

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In our recent article, we gave an example of a Passat 2.0 TD and an unladen weight of 1,535kg and a manufacturers' towing rating of 1,800kg. Both of these are then added together to get 3,335kg which is less than 3,500kg.

We then suggested that a Category B licence would cover this. However, the RSA says that you must find out what the Maximum Authorised Mass of the car and the trailer is. So, if the MAM of the car is, say, 2,010kg and the MAM of the trailer is 800kg, then the combined MAM is 2,810kg and a B licence will suffice, according to the RSA.

If, however, the MAM of the trailer is 1,800kg, we then have a combined MAM of 3,810kg and a BE licence is needed, they say.

The above applies whether the B or BE licence was taken out before or after 19 January 2013. It is also the case that where the licence-holder needs the BE licence in the example above if the MAM of the trailer was any greater than 1,800kg, it would exceed the towing capacity of the car and a BE licence holder could not use the car in the example to tow the trailer. The RSA adds that these weight figures are merely illustrative and do not reflect the actual specification of any particular vehicle.

In the case of the Toyota Land Cruiser, the RSA says that the reference to "unladen weight" being 2,275kg means that the MAM of the vehicle is greater than this.

combined

In that case the MAM of the trailer is 1,225kg so the combined MAM of car and trailer must be greater than 3,500kg and therefore a BE licence is needed to tow this vehicle, according to RSA.

We posed the question: does this mean that with a BE licence you can tow loads up to 4,250kg? The RSA is clear that the answer is no, since the maximum towing capacity of any B category vehicle will not exceed 3,500kg.