Friday, March 14, 2014

M.O.T. Tests

Here in the UK it's a legal requirement for all vehicles over 3 years old to have an annual MOT test (road worthiness test)  The problem is the whole system is fatally flawed.
First of all why 3 years?  What suddenly happens to car at it's third birthday?  Remember that some cars can stand for a year or two before even being registered, so your 3 year car might actually have been made 5 years ago.

Then theres how well a cars driven and looked after, a driver who really takes care of his car, has it serviced and drives it carefully might have a really good safe 10 year old car.. An idiot who drives like a maniac, goes off rroading in his car and does bugger all to it could well have a dangerous car after a few months.  This makes the 3 years bit pointless, maybe all cars should be tested annually. 

But by far the biggest flaw in the system is the way the cars are tested. 
Common sense would suggest that the ministry of transport would have their own test centers where you take your car, they then pass or fail it, if you fail you get a slip to take to any garage telling them what was wrong.so it could be repaired then back to the centre for a re-test.
No sadly thats not how it actually works.  You see the mot licence garages to test the cars themselves... remember the same garage is almost certainly going to get the repair work if it fails.  This gives garages the incentive to fail cars to get more work for themselves.  How bloody stupid is that! 

Now not far from me is a well known national tyre and exhaust place, now I was in there a while back having a tyre repaired ,and while I was there a nearly new car (6 months old) was on the ramps and the mechanic (conman is a better name for this guy) was telling the lady car owner it needed a full new set of brakes and disks all around.  On a 6 month old car?   It's still under warranty for gods sake! 
I told her to take it back to the dealer and have it checked, she'd only gone in to have a Tyre changed after a puncture, they shouldn't have even been checking the brakes.

Thats the trouble whit the system we have now, the MOT is a pointless joke. 

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