Street-legal vehicle

Street legal refers to a vehicle such as an automobile, motorcycle, or light truck that is equipped and licensed for use on public roads. This will require specific configurations of lighting, signal lights, and safety equipment that need not be included in a vehicle used only off-road (such as a sandrail) that is trailered to its off-road operating area, or closed-course race cars that are used only on closed race tracks and therefore do not require all the features that a street-legal vehicle would.

United States

In the United States, the individual states have the authority to determine, by means of statutes and regulations, which types of vehicles are permitted on public streets, as a function of the police power.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, vehicles must pass the Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) scheme, a pre-registration inspection for cars and light goods vehicles that have not been type-approved to British or European standards. Since August 2001, there have been two levels of SVA, those being "standard" and "enhanced".

Some of the types of vehicles standard SVA is applied to include, but not limited to, a left-hand drive vehicle, personally imported vehicles, amateur built vehicles and armoured vehicles, to name a few. Vehicles which don't fall into one of the standard SVA categories, such as a vehicle of right-hand drive, will require enhanced SVA in addition to standard SVA inspections. [http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/vehicles/vssafety/importsapproval/thesinglevehicleapprovalscheme?page=1#a1000 The UK Single Vehicle Approval Scheme] ]

References

Further reading

* [http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosacorp/repository/Motorcycle%20SVA%20Guide.pdf UK Motorcycle SVA guide]