Road Legal Quad Bike Laws/Rules etc

I am looking to buy a road legal quad bike atm, looking at getting a 250cc from bike trader.

Does anyone know the in's and out's regarding tax and insurance etc...on the direct gov site it says something about 2 classes of quad bike on the road 1 of which says does not exceed 45kph...surely you do not have to have it that restricted?

Have been looking around for insurance cheapest I have found so far is £650 for TPFT for a 20 year old with 3 years no claims on a kymco 250cc quad...anyone know of any good quad bike insurers?

Any idea how much road tax is? are there any special road laws for these?

Firstly, ignore all that crap on the 'Direct Gov' site about Cat L6e and L7e - totally irrelevant as I'll explain later. There's basically two classes of quad bike registration - agricultural and PLG.

Agricultural bikes can only be registered to farms and can only be used within a short distance (around 3 miles of the registered address). Basically this class exists so farmers can get from field to field. The advantage of this class is MOT exemption, road tax is free and the bike doesn't need things like road legal tyres, lights, indicators, etc.

However, if you were to get a quad to use on the road full time, then you'd be looking at a PLG registration and not an agricultural one. This means you've got to have road legal tyres, mirrors, horn, indicator, brake lights, headlights, etc. Plus, it has to be MOTed and the tax is not free. However, PLG bikes can be used anywhere and registered to any address.

You can ignore the bit about the 45kph restriction - that only applies to Cat L6e bikes. Nobody registers bikes like this due to the restriction. People legally register these bikes as a PLG instead (this is where the bit of the site where it says "four wheeled vehicles that fall outside of these two definitions would need to be type approved, registered and taxed in another category like a car" comes into play). Registered as a PLG, there are no speed restrictions.

No special road laws - you don't need a helmet but would be mad to ride without one. Insurance - we're covered full comp, for any driver on an agricultural registered 800cc bike for around £250. That's with the NFU, but they may well only do agricultural bikes - but still worth giving a go.

Hope that helps.

Any quad used on the road must have lights - brake lights and headlights, but not indicators. No such thing as road legal tyres really, as long as they have 1.6mm of tread they will be legal, and you wont get any farm quads with less than that. They must be of road worthy condition, whether you need an MOT or not.

OP; why do you want a road legal quad? Surely its half way between a bike and a car without the practicalities of a car, or the fun of a bike?

You can actually get away without having any lights whatsoever on an agricultural quad. Have a look under 'Lighting Requirements' here. The issue is that as soon as you have something like a headlight, you also have to have brake lights, reflectors and numberplate lights. It's an 'all-or-nothing' sort of a rule.

I stand to be corrected on the following, but I was under the impression that quad tyres had to have a certain marking on them to make them road legal. 99% of agricultural quad tyres do not have this marking, but agricultural quads are exempt from this tyre restriction when used on road. However, if you fitted those same tyres to a quad registered as a PLG, then they would no longer be legal as PLGs don't have the exemption.

Cheers for the info! cleared up my confusion about PLG.