The operation of vehicles is prohibited if:

Explanation

When the rear protection device provided for in the vehicle's structure is absent.

The rear protection device is the steel structure beneath the rear of the body that prevents a smaller car from going under a heavy vehicle in a rear-end collision. If the manufacturer provided for this equipment in the design, its absence or removal prohibits operation, even if the rest of the vehicle is faultless.

The reason is one of the most horrifying types of collision. The bumper height of a passenger car is far lower than the load floor or chassis of a heavy vehicle. Without a protective barrier, the car slides under it in a rear-end impact and the point of contact, instead of being the bumper and the crumple zone, reaches straight to the windscreen and the roof pillar. In that case none of the car's safety systems — airbag, deformation zone, seat belt — can do anything. The presence of the protective structure brings the impact down to the level the car was designed for.

Read the colour option correctly too. Red light is permitted at the rear of a vehicle and a rear indicator may be red; what is prohibited at the rear is white light — except for the reversing lamp and the number-plate lamp — and at the front, red light. So a "red indicator at the rear" is no offence, and that invalidates the "in both cases" option.

• Red light is permitted at the rear of a vehicle and a rear indicator may be red; the colour prohibition concerns white light at the rear and red light at the front. • Since a red indicator at the rear is not an offence, "in both cases" cannot be correct.

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