The laws on driving with an England flag on your car

The World Cup is upon use once more, with an army of England fans keen to get behind our national team.
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Attaching an England flag to your car, however, brings up certain road safety issues you should consider.

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The following advice is from the official Ask the Police website:

The issues to consider about driving with flags attached to the car are:

Vision - does the flag obscure the driver or any others drivers vision of the road?

Could it be classed as an insecure load, i.e. likely to come off and cause damage/injury?

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The size of the flag - a normal flag (usually about the size of A4 paper) would not normally cause any problems, but obviously the larger the flag, the more potential for problems.

There is an offence of having a mascot/emblem on the car that, if the vehicle were to collide with someone, the mascot would strike them and cause injury.

If the mascot is not likely to cause injury to a person by reason that it may bend, retract or detach itself from the vehicle then no offence would be committed.

So, although there is not a specific offence, you could commit an offence by having a flag on your car. It is the officer's discretion whether or not to take matters further if he/she feels that an offence has been committed.