Today a mate of mine car failed its mot because the ball covered some of the number plate
Has anyone else come across this ?
Jacko

How much does it cover? I'd imagine it would have to obscure the lettering enough to put doubt into what the plate reads

Then again I suppose technically if it covers the lettering at all it would be illegal

yep the whole number plate /letters of must be visable from a reasonable distance (ie 20 meters)

Yup, the towball shouldn't obscure the numberplate unless there is a trailer attached.

yeah got pulled for speeding once, and during the speech, the copper said

"I'm not happy about that towball either, for a second I thought there was a number behind it"

I then had to correct him as he wrote G47 X-- on the form, "err, it's actually G471 X--"

He went mental, lol

It was a 205 and the towball obscured the plate so badly it was a quick release towball system, but the hole gets full of water and it had seized in

You should have kept stumm and then rejected the ticket on a technicality!

I know, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but as it happens it was only a producer which was quite lucky really as I was doing an alleged 50 something in a 30, I ended up with the lecture and a producer as it wasn't a built up area and it was about 5am

The idea of the numberplate is that you can see it and identify the vehicle by it isn't it ? I've seen cars pulled up for having dirty rear plates before now so it wasn't really a fail for the towbar but the obscuring of the number.