High Court gives artic ruling
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• The High Court has drawn a distinction between the tractor unit and the semi-trailer of an articulated outfit, by allowing an appeal by NFC Forwarding against its conviction for using a defective motor vehicle after a wheel became detached from a semi-trailer.
Justice Auld said the trailer, belonging to the defendent company, had been drawn by a tractor unit belonging to J M Gorry & Son and driven by one of Gorry's drivers, when the outer wheel on the front trailer axle had fallen off. The trailer had clearly been defective, and if the defendent company had been "using" anything, it was the trailer.
Section 190(1) of the 1972 Road Traffic Act defines a "motor vehicle" as a mechanically-propelled vehicle intended or adapted for use on roads, and a "trailer" as a vehicle drawn by a motor vehicle. Section 190(9), concerned with a definition of a motor vehicle construction to carry a load, provided that where a motor vehicle was so constructed that a trailer may, by partial super imposition, be attached to the vehicle in such a manner as to cause a substantial part of the weight of the trailer to be borne by the vehicle, that vehicle shall be deemed to be a vehicle itself constructed to carry a load.
That provision was only necessary because the two did not become one vehicle when attached to one another. More importantly, said Auld, it did not deem the motor vehicle to include the trailer. If a trailer owner was responsible for putting it on the road in a defective condition, he should not be able to escape liability by relying upon someone else to draw it.