Biennial MOT tests

Rilot said:
What amazes me are the amount of "Customer declined repairs and drove the car away"
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Here you go.

Had an old 3 series cab in today, and the first thing I noticed when driving it into the MOT bay was the brake warning light on, which one might assume could possibly give some concern to the driver, but obviously not in this case.
Anyway, I logged in and had a quick nose underneath before starting the test, and there was bit of an issue with the OSR brake pipe which had decided it didn't want to contain brake fluid anymore..

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I did ask the customer whether he'd noticed any problems and whether he'd like me to continue carrying out the test (he hadn't and yes he would).
This is how much brake fluid had made a break for freedom after a short while, it's just dripping out..

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Doesn't look like much, but considering how little fluid a brake system holds, it's not ideal after a few minutes.
The rest of the rear brake pipes were at the point of failing (MOT advisories since 2019) and did indeed fail the test today.
We did quote for the repairs (not a nice job, the fuel tank needs dropping as well as all the other stuff) and offered the customer to leave the car with us until he could get it recovered home, but nope he decided the best course of action was to drive it home whilst brake fluid was literally pouring out of his car (he lived quite a few miles away).
Is it frustrating?, yes, very.
It's just another example of people that polish and maintain the exterior, but give zero ***** about what goes on underneath and just ignore any previous MOT advisories, and in this case has written off the car.
 
Blimey. That's quite shocking.
Would that not fail with a 'dangerous' fault and thus require the car to be repaired before driving on the road again?
 
JonRGV250 said:
Sadly yes.
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Which seems a little mental, if there's one time where letting someone loose with a clamp is a good idea it's probably times like the above.

I suppose the issue is the potential for abuse or people getting physical when they realise they can't take their death trap away.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
This and no it is not potential, it will happen within hours of such a rule coming in.

MOT testers are not the police, nor should they be or expected to be.
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In situations like this where it would be a dangerous fault there should be a system in place to involve the police once they drive away - this is potentially just as bad as stuff like drink driving.
 
Any system where the MOT station is effectively informing on their customer carries the risk of reprisals and I’m sure most wouldn’t want to get involved.

Doesn’t it flag on PNC/ANPR as no MOT right away if it fails? The police can tug it if they want to.

In reality they have little interest in enforcing this proactively with the amount of resources they have in the real world.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Any system where the MOT station is effectively informing on their customer carries the risk of reprisals and I’m sure most wouldn’t want to get involved.

Doesn’t it flag on PNC/ANPR as no MOT right away if it fails? The police can tug it if they want to.

In reality they have little interest in enforcing this proactively with the amount of resources they have in the real world.
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True but still.

AFAIK failing an MOT doesn't invalidate the old one if it hasn't expired or been superseded by a new pass, just means you don't have a valid MOT when the next one is due.
 
Rroff said:
True but still.

AFAIK failing an MOT doesn't invalidate the old one if it hasn't expired or been superseded by a new pass, just means you don't have a valid MOT when the next one is due.
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IIRC if you've been informed the vehicle is dangerously unsafe to drive however I believe by driving it away you are now committing at least one motoring offence, possibly several - I'd have argued that driving a vehicle with seriously defective brakes that you know about is automatically dangerous driving as you are knowingly driving an unsafe vehicle to my mind that falls within the legal definition

"The offence of dangerous driving is when driving falls far below the minimum standard expected of a competent and careful driver, and includes behaviour that could potentially endanger yourself or other drivers.
Examples include...
knowing the vehicle has a dangerous fault or an unsafe load"
From the police UK site, and as a non mechanic I can't think of many faults that you can know about that are more inherently dangerous than brakes that are actively failing.

I'm surprised the MOT system doesn't automatically flag a dangerous failure and invalidate the old MOT regardless of how long it has left given we are told that the MOT is only a snapshot of the state of the vehicle at the time of the test, and that you can be done for having an unroadworthy vehicle regardless of if it's got a valid MOT.

I can understand the reasons the MOT testers shouldn't have to stop people from driving off, but at the same time it strikes me as nuts that you can drive off knowing your vehicle is actively dangerous and potentially it's going to require a random police stop (do they even do that any more?), or after an accident for the vehicle to be stopped from being used on the road in that state.
b0rn2sk8 said:
In reality they have little interest in enforcing this proactively with the amount of resources they have in the real world.
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Yup

My dad has a bunch of stories of how active motoring police used to be back in the 70's and 80's when there were actually motoring police in reasonably large numbers and they had the resources to do something proactive. From what I can tell from his stories he tended to encounter a random stop for all vehicles leaving several of the industrial/office complexes he worked at, at least once a year often as winter approached or if there was particularly bad weather (apparently one day the police were forcing everyone to properly clear the snow off their car windscreens etc). Mind you that was back in the days when the "new" A5 was new and quite lightly used and the number of vehicles on the road was much lower, whilst the number of police who dealt with them was higher.
 
tom_e said:
Which seems a little mental, if there's one time where letting someone loose with a clamp is a good idea it's probably times like the above.

I suppose the issue is the potential for abuse or people getting physical when they realise they can't take their death trap away.
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Yup, it’d be a nightmare for the tester and garage.
I’ve had enough thinly veiled threats over the years, like “my car better ******* pass mate” or “I know the tyres will fail, but you’ll just turn a blind eye, right” etc, then there’s people trying to bribe me pass it (they just get told to **** off).
Then there’s the tantrums and abuse from the owners when their car does fail, so us trying to stop someone driving their car away is a no no.
To be fair to the police, they do check MOT status etc.
I’ve posted this before, and is worth a watch..

 
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