Are you Road Legal? All products sold from this website are legal to use on the road here in the UK and in most countries across the EU. If you are reading this and thinking I can get these products cheaper from other companies who import from the Far East, then you need to ask yourself this question. How much is my light bar going to cost me?
The answer to the above question is simple. If you are using a light bar or other vehicle lighting that is not approved, then it could cost you a lot more than you think.
One of the main reasons that products cost less from the Far East is that companies copy other people’s designs and then go on to mass produce these items, often with little or no quality control. This coupled with the cheap labour in that part of the world means that firms can often produce products at a fraction of the UK costs. Now this is all well and good if you’re buying and using an mp3 player, but not when you are buying and using Emergency Vehicle Warning Lights.
The problem is that these lights are not tested or evaluated for their end use to any appropriate accreditation. In the UK and throughout Europe products have been CE marked for many years. Imported items often come with CE markings, but where did they get them? Have they actually been tested, or have the factory just marked the product with a mark for whichever part of the world it is destined for?
Are you Road Legal? Products for use on road vehicles have to be type approved. In the EU this is known as E or e marking. This means that products meet or exceed the minimum criteria that needs to be met to have an e mark. This testing can only be done at a handful of testing labs. This costs in some cases many thousands of pounds for each product. This cost is passed on to the customer by the manufacturer. This means that you are buying a product that will be fit for the purpose for which you are buying it for. That it won’t fall apart the first time you use it, and that it complies with any safety measures that it needs to. All real “E” marked products will also have an associated approval number next to the E, if a product does not have this number, then it is a fake.
Also, most of the major manufactures have a five year warranty on their products. In the case of our products that is, product free from defects for two years and the electronics and LED’s free from defects for a period of five years from the date of purchase. All of this means considerable resources and development, which we all know costs money. This back-up so to speak, you don’t get with your imported “Knock-Off” lightbar.
The other thing to consider is if your lightbar is not type approved (ECE R65) and you are using it on your vehicle on the road, then you could be liable to prosecution if an accident occurs, and it is subsequently found that you were using an un-approved device. In fact certain police forces will prosecute you even if there is no accident because you are using equipment that is not type approved, and is therefore illegal.
So back to the original question, Are you Road Legal? How much is my lightbar going to cost me? It could be a lot more than you first thought. We all like to get a bargain, and the prices that some of these cheap lightbars at first seem too good to be true. In reality, they generally are. As a final thought, if it’s not the genuine article, then please don’t buy it. The risks of it going wrong, or even not working at all in this business where people’s lives are at stake, is just not worth it.