MOT test garages pass one in 10 cars that should fail

Research reveals there could be 1.29 million unroadworthy and potentially dangerous cars being driven on the UK’s roads...

Putting your car through its MOT test should give you the reassurance that it is roadworthy and safe to drive for another year. However, we have discovered that one in 10 of the cars that pass the annual inspection should have failed. When you consider that there are around 26.6 million cars over three years old on our roads that need an MOT test every year, that means there could be 1.29 million vehicles being driven with potentially dangerous defects.

The revelation that many garages are failing to uphold Government MOT test standards has been revealed by an annual Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) investigation. The MOT Compliance Survey 2021-2022 aims to find out whether the correct testing standards are being applied by the industry. We used a Freedom of Information request to obtain a copy of the report from the DVSA.

Each year, the survey reports the findings of a team of DVSA expert vehicle examiners, who retest a randomly selected sample of vehicles that have been put through an MOT test. For the 2021-2022 survey, they retested 1732 vehicles, with the DVSA examiners using the MOT facilities at the sites where the vehicles were originally tested to establish if the correct test standards had been applied and the correct test outcome achieved.taking action on the survey results and supporting testers with new digital tools, as well as demonstrating the hard work of MOT testers.”

The DVSA examiners disagreed with the MOT test outcomes in 12% of instances, saying that 2% of the cars that had failed were actually worthy of a pass certificate, and that 10% of the cars passed by MOT testers should have failed. The number of vehicles passing when they should have failed is slightly lower than the previous time the tests were carried out. In 2019-2020, 13.5% of cars that should have failed were given a pass, and 3% of carsfailed when they should have passed. (There is no data for 2020-2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.)

The 2021-2022 data also revealed that three or more failworthy defects were found on more than half (52%) of the vehicles the MOT testers had incorrectly allowed to pass. Of that same group, 24% had two incorrectly diagnosed defects and 25% had one wrongly categorised fault.

Most worryingly, the most commonly overlooked fail items were tyres and brakes, both of which are safety-critical components. MOT testers didn’t apply the correct test standard relating to tyre condition in 59% of cases; that’s 734 of the cars examined. Defects with braking systems were incorrectly diagnosed in 58% of cases (660 cars).

The DVSA took action against many of the garages that were found not to be sticking to the correct MOT test standards. It instigated disciplinary actions against 27 garages and wrote 164 advisory warning letters to others. However, not all MOT test errors resulted in disciplinary outcomes, and no action was taken in cases where the examiners believed the errors to be marginal.

A DVSA spokesperson said: “Our MOT Compliance Survey is an essential tool helping us to make our roads among the safest in Europe. The vast majority of MOT testers carry out testing to the highest standards.

“We are delighted to see that standards have improved since the last report. This underlines the importance of DVSA taking action on the survey results and supporting testers with new digital tools, as well as demonstrating the hard work of MOT testers.”

Most common areas where DVSA disagreed with MOT test station

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