After more than 15 years of discussion and debate, the Department of Transport and the Road Safety Authority (RSA) this week unveiled new regulations that will apply to tractors, trailers and agricultural machinery, when used on the public road. The new regulations were issued as Statutory Instruments late last week and earlier this week, having been signed into law by the Minister for Transport, Leo Varadker TD.

These regulations are no longer open for discussion. They come into effect on January 1, 2016. The regulations update the 51-year-old 1963 Road Traffic Act, on which all current tractor and trailer legislation has been based.

These new regulations deal with a number of key road safety areas, including braking, lighting and visibility, weights, dimensions and coupling and plating and speed rating.

The regulations are contained in four separate Statutory Instruments, No’s 247, 248, 249 and 253, published in recent days. The information about the legal and practical aspects of the regulations are contained in a number of information sheets that are available from the RSA website www.rsa.ie.

The RSA believes that the majority of correctly maintained tractors in use will already comply with the revised standards being introduced.

It claims that those tractors that do not comply are likely to need only minor improvements such as the fitting of a flashing amber beacon and/or a replacement manufacturer’s plate indicating their design axle weights and maximum weight that can be towed.

The area of tractor and trailer weights has been a contentious one. The new regulations do seem reasonable and take into account new tractor and machinery technology.

The range of weight levels will vary depending on the number of axles on trailers, the spacing between the axles and other features such as drawbar type (ball and spoon versus hook and eye), as well as trailer suspensions. If a popular tandem axle trailer fulfils all of the criteria in the new regulations it will be legal to tow a weight of up to 24 tonnes including the weight of the trailer.

This is based on a rating of 10 tonnes per axle with some allowance made for the weight transferred to the tractor by the drawbar and tractor hitch. Many existing trailers, without modifications, will be rated to 8 tonnes per axle plus 3 tonnes drawbar load for a tandem axle trailer, to give a full load rating of 19 tonnes.

Detail

There is a lot of detail in the regulations. They will take some time to digest and that is why the January 2016 enforcement date is in place. This will allow manufacturers, farmers and contractors to adapt and make machine changes where necessary to existing machines.

New weight limits of 13, 19 and 22.5 tonnes will be introduced for rigid drawbar single, tandem and tri-axle agricultural trailers. Higher weight limits of up to 24 and 34 tonnes will be allowed for trailers that are plated by the manufacturer and satisfy additional technical requirements.

The new regulations introduce a maximum vertical load that can be exerted on a tractor’s hitch coupling by trailer drawbar subject to tractor manufacturer’s specifications of 3 tonnes or 4 tonnes.

The new regulations state where a combination of an un-plated tractor and trailer is used, then their maximum towable mass will be capped at 3 times the tractors unladen weight. This is to prevent smaller tractors being used to achieve the higher trailer load ratings.