[Opinion] Well known Chinese Van

[Martinco]

Please give me your opinion on the following:

My son-in-law has a guard security business and mainly posts out guards at customer premises to keep the skelms away.
So in order to do so he goes out and buys himself 2 of the C--n- vans with the high roof and a rear opening door complete with a "step" built into the rear bumper.
The vehicles are also equipped with a row of abolstered seats on each side of the vehicles and he uses these vans to post his people on various sites.
All is fine till the traffic police stop the vehicles and tells the drivers that these vehicles are not designed/licensed to carry passengers at the back, and takes away the license disks.

He now goes back to the dealer and tells them what happened and got the answer that these are not really "people carriers" and that they ( the dealer/importer ) would have to apply to the SABS to have these vehicles approved for this purpose. It has now been 2 months that he is sitting ( and paying ) for vehicles that does not serve the purpose for which they were bought and cannot even use as he has no license disks. At no point in the sale transaction was it ever mentioned that these are not "people carriers" and the sales person was perfectly aware of the purpose of the vehicles.

( By the way.........new legislation now prohibits the carrying of passengers in the back of a bakkie, truck or van that is not designed/equiped to do so.......................so next time the cop van wants to put you in the back, you can refuse. )

Do you think that he would have good cause to insist that the dealer takes back the vehicles and refund his money ?

[adrianh]

Martin - You must write a mail to 702 & Cape Talk. They have discussed the taxi conversion issue on radio a couple of times. It would be good to get radio exposure to inform the entire country that those clowns are selling inappropriate vehicles.

[Martinco]

Thanks Adrian,

Good idea to involve the media.

I was thinking along the lines of the Ombudsman, but this normally takes a while as well.

[Dave A]

( By the way.........new legislation now prohibits the carrying of passengers in the back of a bakkie, truck or van that is not designed/equiped to do so

Can anyone point me in the direction for this new legislation, please. It doesn't happen often in our business, but it does every now and then. I probably better read the specifics.

[murdock]

me too i am transporting people in a van...would love to see the regs.

[Petrichor]

This is the first time I hear of this too, and believe it will have implications on many small business, so would love to see the details around this. I understand the reasoning in terms of safety for passengers, but find it strange that something like this could have been passed without informing the public properly. (Or did I miss something along the line, whilst I was living in my cave)

[Martinco]

Ok...............the issue is that a LDV is normally licensed to carry 2 people ( as per the indication on the license disc ) and if you exceed this number, you are in violation on this regulation.
So plain and simple...............just look what is indicated on the disc !

I think this regulation has been in place for some time already but in order to make more money and cause more inconvenience to the business owner, this is getting more attention from the traffic guys.

[Dave A]

Interesting one! Would love to read up the applicable legislation sometime just to see if there are any provisos.

My experience is most traffic officials are not familiar with the correct implimentation of the Transportation of Hazardous Goods legislation, especially the mixed load matrix (most try to maintain that any mixed load is not allowed).

Idle thought: How about if we have a sticker on people in the back of LDV's marked "fragile cargo"?