In light of the recent news on breakfast TV about drivers being warned that they could be invalidating their insurance and could receive up to a £3,000 fine if they are overloading the family car, Perfect Pitch Magazine decided to take a closer look at what this really meant.

With more families holidaying in the UK in the current economic climate fear has started to spread through the camping community that they will be causing themselves insurance problems by loading their car with all their usual camping equipment. As the summer holidays are well underway and people are loading their cars with  their tents, cooking equipment, stoves, bbq’s, wind breaks and awnings, chairs and loungers, tables, sleeping equipment, rucksacks, toys, the family pet, and not even mentioning all the extra luxury glamping equipment is it realisitic to worry about your car load? Is your insurance company going to frown upon your camping packing of the car? And what can you do to prevent any unnecessary complications? We spoke to Ian Crowder the Public Relations Manager at The AA to shed some light on the subject.

“It can be easy to overload a car and the police are keeping an eye out during the holidays for vehicles that are very obviously overloaded and will take drivers to a weighbridge to check.

In most cases, people unwittingly overload their cars – for example, with camping gear, four people and a roofbox with luggage you could inadvertently take your car a little over its weight capacity.  You are however most likely to exceed the load of your car if you come back from France with the car jam packed with cases of wine or crates of beer…

So how do you find out what the safe load is?

Well your handbook, your registration document and indeed the car’s identification plate (you will see this under the bonnet at the front of the car usually) all say what the maximum load will be.  But of course most people won’t have access to a weighbridge and getting the bathroom scales out to weigh the tent, the cases, the boxes of food and equipment etc, to say nothing of the driver and passengers, and then add them all together, is not something most people are likely to do!

So really, it’s down to common sense.

What the police are looking for is cars that are so obviously overloaded that the safety of the vehicle is compromised and usually, common sense will tell you just by looking at it.  Does it look as if it’s sitting down on its haunches? Does the steering feel a bit funny?

For instance, a lot of weight in the back could mean the headlights pointing high and dazzling oncoming vehicles and it might make the steering light.  A lot of weight on the roof, especially if there are four or five people in the car as well, could make it a lot less stable when going round corners.  You could be putting a strain on the springs, wheel bearings, tyres and suspension system, especially if it’s an older car; braking effectiveness will be reduced to say nothing of straining and overheating the engine on, say, a long and hilly journey.  Overloading could seriously compromise your ability to steer the car in a straight line and round bends smoothly.  You could do serious damage and lose control if you hit a pot-hole or other obstruction at any speed.  And there’s the risk of overturning if you’re a bit quick on a sharp bend especially if there is an adverse road camber.

The police certainly recognise that most people won’t have an easy way of weighing their car and its contents so in most cases, if your car isn’t overloaded by much, you’ll probably get a warning and told to drive carefully and take care when loading the car in future.

However, in an extreme case, you could get three points on your license and a fixed penalty of £60 and told to unload some of the car’s contents before continuing your journey.

Will it compromise your insurance cover, if you were to have an accident, a contributory cause of which was overloading of the car?  For instance, the brakes not working properly, or taking a bend too fast and causing the car to overturn?  Well the truth is that it would be a very harsh company that would invalidate insurance completely, even though the insurer would be within its rights to do so. It would have to be an extreme and blatant overloading of the vehicle to lead to an insurer refusing to pay the cost of your own damage (although they would still pay any damage to a third party).  But they might well take the overloading into account in their settlement and may well increase your premium in future.

Certainly, if you pick up an offence it will affect your insurance premiums. The specific offences are for “Causing or likely to cause danger by reason of load or passengers” (which is offence code CU50, which incurs three points and £60 fine). In an extreme case you might also pick up an offence for driving without due care and attention (CD10) if you are clearly not in control of the vehicle and that could result in up to 9 points and in theory, up to £3k fine.”

So it appears that common sense and careful packing comes in to play here. As long as you are cautious, and pack carefully so there are no glaringly obvious hazards then you should be safe. Unless you are loading your bags with bricks, or cases of wine and you have 4 or 5 extremely heavy passengers, all sat on one side of the car, with an uneven load it seems unrealistic that you will even have to worry about even coming close to or exceeding your cars recommended laden weight.

A few simple steps will ensure you a safer journey and give you peace of mind. Make sure your car is regularly serviced, before you put each item in the car think do I really need it, always check your air pressure of your tyres once the vehicle is fully loaded, and make sure everything is securely stowed. But if you are concerned and want to be cautious then perhaps now is a good time for you to think about minimizing what you take with you, use this an excuse to limit what you take, buy local produce, and be kinder to your environment by decreasing the vehicles laden weight and therefore your carbon footprint.