Kosovo
Cap in the app: 80 km/h.
Speed
80 km/h outside built-up areas, motorway included, 50 within built-up areas (neni 52.1). Neni 54.1.1 gives 80 on every road except the autostradë and motoudhë to automjete të cilat tërheqin rimorkio për kampim — the caravan is named with a word of its own, and neni 1.44 defines mjet për kampim as a vehicle with fixed camping fittings. On the autostradë and motoudhë, neni 54.2 lists three categories, and the only one that can catch an outfit is 54.2.3, mjetet e transportit me mjete të bashkëngjitura, also 80. Read that point narrowly as goods vehicles instead and the outfit stands without a category limit on the motorway and falls under neni 53.1. Both readings give 80 outside built-up areas, which is the figure the cap uses. Neni 54.3 binds the category limit even where the law or a sign allows more.
Source. Ligji Nr. 08/L-186 për rregullat e trafikut rrugor, Gazeta Zyrtare 6/2024 of 2024-03-18, nenet 52–54. The law repeals 05/L-088 and 06/L-069
Dimensions — the figures stand three steps away from the traffic act
Kosovo has the longest chain of references in the whole section. The traffic act contains not a single dimension. Instead it says, in its second-to-last substantive provision:
Neni 239 — Mjetet rrugore. Për pjesëmarrje në trafikun rrugor çdo mjet rrugor dhe çdo mjet i bashkëngjitur duhet t'i plotësojë kushtet dhe kriteret siç parashihen me Ligjin përkatës për Automjete.
Every vehicle and every towed vehicle must meet the conditions in the vehicles act. The vehicles act, Ligji nr. 05/L-132, sets no figures either but gives the ministry the power to set them. The figures appear only in the ministry's regulation, and that is the one to read: Udhëzimi Administrativ (MMPHI) nr. 09/2022 për kushtet e pjesëmarrjes të automjeteve në rrugë, signed 15 December 2022 and published 28 December 2022.
The regulation's neni 5 pushes the length onwards once more, to annex 1:
Neni 5 — Dimensionet dhe masat e mjetit. 1. Dimensionet dhe masat e mjetit janë të përcaktuar në shtojcën I të këtij Udhëzimit Administrativ.
The width and the height on the other hand stand in plain words in the regulation:
Neni 7 — Gjerësia më e madhe e lejuar e mjeteve rrugore. 1. Gjerësia më e madhe e lejuar e mjeteve të kategorisë L1 është 1,00 m, për kategorit e mjeteve të tjera të kategorisë L është 2,00 m, ndërsa për kategoritë tjera është 2,55 m.
2. Gjerësia më e madhe e lejuar e kamionit frigorifer, kontejnerit me mur të izoluar apo mbindërtimit të ndërrueshëm me mur të izoluar ku trashësia murit është të paktën 45 mm është 2.60 m.
Neni 8 — Lartësia e mjeteve rrugore. 1. Lartësia më e madhe e lejuar e mjetit të kategorisë L është 2,50 m, ndërsa e kategorive të mjeteve tjera është 4,00 m.
And the length stands in the annex, as a ten-row table without a single category restriction:
Shtojca 1 — Gjatësia maksimale e lejuar e mjeteve
| | | | |---|---|---| | 1. | mjetet, përveç autobusëve | 12,00m | | 2. | mjeti i bashkëngjitur me me bigë | 12,00m | | 3. | gjysmërimorkiot (të matur nga skaji i fundit i gjysmërimorkios e deri tek pika qendrore çengelit) | 12,00m | | 4. | rimorkiator (koka tërheqëse me gjysmërimorkio) | 16,50m | | 5. | mjeti tërheqës (kamioni) me rimorkio | 18,75m | | 6. | autobusë me dy boshte | 13,50m | | 7. | autobusë me më shumë se dy boshte | 15,00m | | 8. | autobusi nyjor | 18,75m | | 9. | mjeti tërheqës dhe rimorkio, për transportin e automjeteve | 21,00m | | 10. | mjetet e kategorisë L | 4,00m |
Row 2, mjeti i bashkëngjitur me bigë, is the towed vehicle with a drawbar — the caravan. Twelve metres. Row 5 is the outfit: 18.75 m.
Source: Udhëzimi Administrativ (MMPHI) nr. 09/2022, neni 2, 5–8 and 10 and shtojca 1, published in the Gazeta Zyrtare on 28 December 2022, in force seven days later under neni 156. The traffic act is Ligji nr. 08/L-186 për rregullat e trafikut rrugor, Gazeta Zyrtare 6/2024, published 18 March 2024, repealing 05/L-088 and 06/L-069.
Kosovo copies out the EU directive and loses the exception. The regulation's neni 1.2 enumerates 96/53/EC, 2002/7/EC and 2015/719 as the acts it implements, and the figures are the directive's. But article 1(1)(a) of the directive, which puts the car and the caravan outside, has not come along. Instead Kosovo has written a scope of its own:
Neni 2 — Fusha e zbatimit. 1. Ky Udhëzim Administrativ zbatohet për personat fizik dhe juridik që marrin pjesë në trafikun rrugor.
The regulation applies to all natural and legal persons taking part in traffic. The exceptions in point 2 are three and only three: defence forces' vehicles, vehicles under test, and vehicles intended solely for the track. A car with a caravan is not among them. It is the same conclusion as in Latvia and Croatia, but reached in a third way: not by the limit row catching the combination, but by the exception rule never having been written.
| Dimension | Kosovo | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Width, car | 2.55 m | UA 09/2022 neni 7.1 |
| Width, trailer | 2.55 m | UA 09/2022 neni 7.1 |
| Height | 4.00 m | UA 09/2022 neni 8.1 |
| Length, caravan | 12.00 m | Shtojca 1, row 2 |
| Length, outfit | 18.75 m | Shtojca 1, row 5 |
Two more dimensions that apply only to combinations. Neni 6.3 sets a minimum: the distance between the towing vehicle's rear axle and the towed vehicle's front axle may not be less than 3 m. An ordinary outfit clears it with a margin, but a very short caravan behind a short car does not do so obviously. Neni 10.7 and 10.8 add the directive's two internal dimensions to an outfit: from the towing vehicle's rear point to the caravan's front at most 15.65 m, and from the load space's foremost point behind the cab to the caravan's load space's rear point at most 16.40 m, both measured parallel to the combination's longitudinal axis.
The traffic act on the other hand has four rules triggered by length, not by weight. Those are the ones noticed in practice, and three of them catch an outfit nobody would call large:
- Neni 118. Outside built-up areas, on a road with only one lane per direction, vehicles with a gross weight over 3,500 kg or a length over seven metres driving one behind the other must keep a gap of at least 100 metres. The fine is 150 euros, and the distance may be measured with certified fixed or mobile equipment. Seven metres is a car with a small caravan — the rule in practice catches every outfit.
- Neni 159. On a motorway with three or more lanes in the same direction, vehicles over 5,000 kg or vehicles with a trailer longer than seven metres may use only the two right-hand lanes. 100 euros.
- Neni 89.1.4. Within built-up areas a vehicle or vehicle combination with a gross weight over 3,500 kg or a length over twelve metres may not be parked other than in a place signposted for such vehicles.
- Neni 176. A load may project at most one metre forwards. Rearwards the limit is not a measurement but a fraction: at most one sixth of the vehicle's own length. And point 3 settles what "the vehicle's length" means for an outfit:
3. Në qoftë se me mjet transportohet ngarkesa në mjetin e bashkëngjitur që përbëhet nga mjeti tërheqës dhe nga rimorkio me një bosht, me gjatësi të mjetit kuptohet gjatësia e përgjithshme e mjetit tërheqës dhe e rimorkios me një bosht.
With a single-axle caravan, the towing car's and the caravan's combined length counts. A twelve-metre car with caravan may therefore project two metres at the back, while the same caravan alone would have given a little over one. If the load projects more than one metre, the outermost point must be marked with red cloth, and beyond that with a 50 × 50 cm plate with alternating orange reflective and white diagonal stripes, mounted perpendicular to the longitudinal axis. 40 euros. Neni 177 adds a white light forwards and a red one backwards in reduced visibility.
Neni 240 gives the police, the ministry's inspectorate, the municipal inspectorate and customs the right to stop or remove vehicles exceeding the dimensions, the maximum permitted mass or axle load. The vehicle is released only when the competent authority has issued a certificate that it is in the prescribed condition.
Method note. Regulation 09/2022 exists only as a scanned PDF of 188 pages without a text layer: 178 JPEG images, zero fonts, no searchable text. None of the text extractors we use can read it. The pages were therefore rendered to images and read as images, one at a time, until annex 1 was found on page 154. That is also why the wordings above are transcribed by hand from the Albanian column and not cut from a text file. The document is trilingual, and the English column cannot be trusted: row 2 of annex 1, mjeti i bashkëngjitur me bigë, stands there as "vehicle attached- with crotch". Bigë is the drawbar. Whoever reads the English column first has no idea that the row is about a caravan.