Safe Speed Forums

Can't find the old post about this -so apologies if been done.
Found this looking for somthing about MOTs --

MOT PETITION

A worthy cause -

Is it? (a worthy cause.)

As someone who uses their private vehicle for less than 8,000 miles per year, I'd support the two year proposal, or rather a system based on usage rather than a calendar.



To take each point in turn.


Being flippant. 'Slicks' are quite good on dry roads. Rarely do tyres reach the stage of being 'bald'. Whilst I would agree that insufficient tread depth does pose a danger, I find the language used is sensationalist.



Quite often. But the car also has sensors that monitor fluid levels and pad wear. It has just topped 100,000 miles and has only recently had it's third set of pads replaced, front only, and only because the sensor indicated wear, but having stripped them down, they were well within permitted tolerances, but, as I had gone that far, I decided to replace them anyway.

On that basis, a 4 yearly test would have been quite sufficient.

In fact, thinking about it. The last time that I had a vehicle that suffered a 'brake failure' was in the early 1970's.



Many times, but not because of a blown bulb, morelike the numpty hadn't the 'wit' to indicate in the first place. Again, my car has a display to indicate failed bulbs. In fact, systems that detect an indicator bulb failure have been in existence for nigh on 40 years. The 'flasher unit' operates at a faster speed.

I read some figures somewhere that stated that the main reason for a 'lighting' failure at MOT time was concerned with headlamp alignment. Headlamps do not mis-align themselves. Someone changes a bulb and fails to ensure that it is seated correctly.

The MOT is, and always has been, a statement that the vehicle was at the required standard, on the date and time that it was tested. Modern vehicles, whilst being of greater complexity, are also able to 'self-diagnose' faults before they reach the point of becoming dangerous.

I once stopped a Private Hire Taxi late one Friday evening. He had three lighting defects. IIRC, a tail light, a number plate light, and a stop lamp. Whilst he thought the matters of little consequence, after I explained to him that he had a 'duty' to his customers that they be conveyed in a roadworthy vehicle, I gave him an hour to re-present the vehicle, otherwise I would come and find him and impose a 'prohibition' that couldn't be lifted until the council offices opened on the Monday. Hence he would 'lose' the lucrative part of Friday and ALL of Saturday.

An hour later, he was back.

Rather than just looking at the calendar age of the vehicle, perhaps there is an argument for testing vehicles according to, for instance, Insurance classes, or even, 'Green' issues. After all, a High Performance vehicle covering a high mileage should be tested more frequently than a low mileage 'City runabout'.

We have a numbering system for Insurance groups. Why not a 'numbering' system that determines when vehicles need to be tested, based on the multiplier of 'group' x 'mileage'.

No. It's not a website that I would support.

I support the proposal. Given the improved build quality and reliability of modern vehicles, an MoT starting at 4 years and then every two years seems like a major step forward.

It will also be a substantial cut in bureaucracy, which will free people up for more productive work.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I have never, ever consciously noticed a broken indicator. Ever.
Except the one I broke myself. But I replaced that with 2 LEDs which worked just as well. (And I checked it fairly often. And it passed an MOT with this pair of non-type-approved LEDs in. And they stayed working until I got rid of the car. They it got a new W5W replacement.)

What I think is more important is that all vehicles have a standard protocol used on the OBD II connector, such that it is easy to go to someone with a cable and see what faults, if any, are there. An MOT based on vehicle use makes more sense, but that could encourage 'clocking'?

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Andrew.

Don't get that bit,
Two 3yr old cars

Fiat panda 10,000 mls (2 services if any)
Audi S8 150,000 mls (10+ dealer services)

A 3yr 10k fiat is likely to have pitted discs from standing or incomplete clearing on short trips, and may fail the first MOT

A 3yrs 150k S8 should be approaching its 3rd set of discs, and has been serviced 3 times a year, my moneys on a MOT pass first time.


CCTV cameras can spot cars with blown lights, there's money in it!
More fines and points for vehicle defects, they'll need some to sort out Francis-O'Halloran

fatboytim

But none of that guarantees that the brakes will keep working correctly. I recently had a rear pad seize. That was on a car that does 30K miles per year and gets serviced every 12500 miles. I realised something was wrong and got it fixed but I suspect an awful lot of people would have no idea that there was even a problem.

Putting the whole thing in a systematic road safety perspective, few crashes are contributed to by vehicle defects, and fewer still are caused by vehicle defects.

Where a defect does cause a crash, I think I'm right in thinking that the largest single cause is underinflated tyres leading to overheating and failure or loss of control. And of course you might suffer that fate the day after a successful MoT test.

All things considered vehicle defects, as detected by MoT tests, are almost completely absent from crash causation.

Perhaps it's the drivers who need a MoT?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Whilst, on this evidence alone, it is impossible to draw any conclusions, no doubt the 'rule makers' can use it to support the current requirements.



Much more evidence to support this notion!!

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

Still can't find the post i remember was about when the EU came out with this idea - pity as i seem to remember that the opposition to the idea of tinkering with the British system was wrong(which is my own gut feeling) - that's why i mentioned the petition -to draw it to the attention of anyone who felt it was a bad idea.
With the increase in reliability i suspect that i must agree with the change of MOT after four years - and then again at the interville - much the same as the change in driving laws - those that care /register/ do things by the bok are being penalised. Those that don't bother with a service /tyre check/ etc are those that the test would catch out ( if they ever have it done)

I reckon pressure warning sensors should be standard on all new cars. Airbags etc. are a requirement but I would rather prevent a crash than attempt to reduce the consequences. I bet everybody has driven a vehicle with a puncture and not realised it. On my C5 I can usually tell easily if there is a problem on the front (1 or 2 PSI low) but a slow puncture on the back is only noticable during hard cornering when the car feels horrible and the tyre has already lost several PSI.

Why do garages never seem to get the pressure right. My car was in for a service recently and they managed to get all four tyres at different and wrong pressures (All too high). If they were consistent I would put it down to the tolerance between my guage and theirs.

I bought a van....garage maintained and serviced.
All the tyres were at 19psi. They should have been at 29psi.
The garage had been inflating them to 1.9 bar, using the wrong scale.
I won't even go into the "wipe the oil filter with a rag...that'll do" garage philosophy. Nor the charging 5 quid a litre for reclaimed oil. Nor charging for a complete kit for a cambelt change and only fitting the belts. Need I go on ?
I promise I am not going to mention having to put a m/cycle in for a makers diagnostic check....for a fuel injection fault....and the garage not spotting the injector solenoid shorting to chassis....which would have shown on the test set...if it had been used.
Just because your vehicle has been serviced by a technician doesn't mean it's ok.

I don't have hugely strong feelings one way or the other BUT on balance I'd prefer to see it kept as it is. Mr. Rep or Mr. taxi driver can do 50,000 miles a year so that's 200,000 miles by the time it gets its first MOT. On the other hand, maybe neither keep a car for 4 years...

"Classic" cars might well do very few miles but they are often of a design that would require a much shorter component replacement / inspection / maintenance interval than modern cars. My old 1972 Scimitar needed its suspension trunnions greasing every 6000 miles and the penalty for not doing so could be a catastrophic suspension failure!

Up until a few years ago, I was doing up to 25,000 miles a year in a 14 year old car with well over 150,000 on the clock. Despite being an "enthusiastic" DIY mechanic, I was pretty glad of a "second opinion" every year!

Is £40-50 a year SUCH a big problem in the overall cost of running a car?

I think there are plenty of people with a complete lack of interest in cars (who might well drive along very smugly within the speed limit ) on tyres that had gone below the legal minimum. My dad has ben a mechanic pretty much all his working life and has seen PLENTY of punters driving around on stuff that would scare the hell out of most folk with an ounce of mechanical empathy! Suspension bushes so worn you could see daylight through the rubber or dampers that had stopped showing signs of a leak because they'd puked ALL their oil out ages ago...

"...yes now you mention it, I DID notice it making a bit of a knock" is the sort of comment he often hears!

As for mechanical defects not featuring that highly in the causation stats - well, maybe not but I often wonder how closely the cars are examined - other than in high profile serious accident cases. I'm sure in today's climate of "...we've got "exceeding the speed limit" down as a cause - what more evidence do we need"? thinking, there might not e much incentive to look that hard!

An x with a marker pen on the oil filter, and a little fresh chalk to the wheel nuts and fliud resevoir caps usually lets the garage know you'll be checking, (or you may be a Trading Standards mystery shopper).

Many moons ago my uncle (a toolmaker) made a blanked grease nipple which he would put on his Alvis prior to a service, if they didn't find he didn't pay 'til they did.

IIRC the final judgement of an MOT tester is "would you let a family member or close friend drive the vehicle?" Someone doing that annually reassures me.

fatboytim

Interesting...........

Whether you agree or disagree with the proposals, one thing shone out at me. The concern over the added costs of a perceived increase in accidents to the Chancellor, i.e. "the taxpayer" seems to be uppermost. Isn't this what the speed camera war upon the motorist is all about? Saving money.

At last it's out..........They don't care about your safety, only the cost to the public purse. They don't care if you do die, just that it doesn't cost them money.

Just like I always thought.........

I'm not sure which side of the fence I am with this.

I suspect that it's a back door route to further the wishes of certain politicians to ban all vehicles over ten years old and that with the new tests will come more-stringent requirements that only newer vehicles can pass. Since I'm very much in favour of keeping perfectly good older vehicles in service rather than consigning them to landfill, I'm very suspicious about the proposals.

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Will

I've been thinking about this overnight, and the importance given to annual vehicle testing is disproportionate to the contribution to crash stats.

So it's another 'make important what you can measure' strategy that exists because the authorities dont really know...

- What's important
- How to measure it
- How to make it better

That's not to say there's anything wrong with annual - or biannual testing, but it does help us to understand that the more important and more significant psychological factors are being ignored (or at best undervalued) at every level in our road safety systems.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Personally, I think that annual testing is a very poor substitute for proper servicing. Manufacturer's know the MTBF for the safety-critical bits of their product and have written service schedules accordingly. Where they've got it wrong, there is the recall system (albeit somewhat in disarray because of things like the Clio bonnet catch and Volvo ETM fiascos), but the failures probably wouldn't have been picked up at MOT anyway.

It is very easy to assess whether a vehicle has been properly serviced - it's called the service history. Since all servicing is based on a combination of mileage and time (AFAICT all vehicles should be serviced annually no matter how little used), surely authorised service centres should be able to certify the roadworthiness of the vehicles they service. Thus testing should only be needed for vehicles that are owner-serviced or serviced by unauthorised service centres.

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Will

Yeah but what about DIY servicing like I do? That would be a BIG problem for anyone maintaining their own "classic". Besides, I'm pretty firmly in the camp that says you don't necessarily get BETTER, more thorough or conscientious servicing when you go to a main stealer, you just get someone to sue when you find it hasn't been done properly!

In my view, I like the "independence" of the VOSA test AND I think all MOT stations should be banned from offering to do work on cars that they fail!

edited to say "ooops! didn't read your last line"!

I have owned cars where seatbelt mountings where rusted out, this only showed up at MOT and had obviously happened in the year between MOTs, maybe a scaled MOT system is required, 4 years till first then every 2 years until failing on a safety critical system, thereafter yearly, cars over 10 years old can develop major problems with rust fairly quick especially if any minor damage hasn't been fixed fully.

By "authorised service centre", I mean DfT/VOSA-authorised, not main dealerships. You might even have the situation where a main dealership has to have their work verified by testing (although, that's unlikely because I suspect they'd all want to be accredited). MOT testers must be VOSA authorised, so why not have a similar sort of accreditation for mechanics (or perhaps just shop supervisors). Enthusiastic DIY'ers might want to get accredited so that they could self-certify their own cars. The same system might also be used to oblige manufacturers to release the full service schedule for their products, so that main dealerships no longer have an unfair advantage in this respect.

At the end of the day, the fundamental offence is using a vehicle in dangerous condition on the roads, and you can get done for that the day after your car has passed MOT. So the MOT system is no guarantee of roadworthiness and having the mechanic sign for their work and certify the vehicles they service to be roadworthy might have more meaning.

Just a thought...

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Will