Car passed MOT, accident happened could have been fatal. What next?

[Resident]

May have been fine on the day of the test then you've gone out and hit a pothole/kerb and caused a fractured which has rusted over the last 2 months.

Garage has no liability here.

Is a new account how on earth would you know a site like this world even have a motoring sub.

There's been many times I've searched for a motoring issue and OcUK has been one of the top results, sometimes the only result with a forum rather than Youtube vids or single non-interactive pages

 

[Gaygle]

Failure of a wishbone due to corrosion is very very unlikely. Those things are usually made of solid steel or cast iron. If it's been corroded badly enough to fail, its been in poor condition for many years.

It would have been picked up in a service too.

Agreed. I've seen several ball joints that have failed (and every single car i've seen with this failure has had it advised on the previous MOT which the owner clearly ignored), but i've never seen a chunk of metal like a wishbone rot through completely. OP, we'd need pictures of the failure point as i have a feeling that it has probably failed at the ball joint, and the wishbone hasn't rotted through. I've taken numerous suspension arms/wishbones off cars that are 20 years old and have 150k+ miles on the clock and none have ever been even in the same ball park as corroding so much that they rot through/fail. The only time I could potentially imagine this happening, is if a car had been parked in the ocean for 20 years.

Impossible to prove you haven't brought the car elsewhere or worked on it in the meantime, perhaps the corrosion couldn't have happened in 2 months, 2 months is enough to swap all good parts for bad parts... I'm trying to say that if it's your word vs the garage, it's very hard to prove they are at fault.

And who is going to believe that the OP deviously removed his uncorroded and clean wishbone, found a wishbone online that was *almost* completely corroded through, got a garage to fit it, then put his wife and kids in the car and drove around as much as possible in the hope it would fail, just so he could have a chance at arguing with an MOT garage/VOSA about their culpability?

An MOT means a car/whatever will pass on that day, not necessarily 7ish weeks later.

The wishbone was serviceable on the day it passed, clearly, today, it wasn’t.

It does, but you have to look at it in the context of the alleged complaint - had this been a tyre that had worn away, and the OP had driven it for 7 weeks and 2000 miles since the MOT - then i completely agree. The tyre wear is possibly/likely to have been in a passable state when it was MOT'd, albeit you'd potentially expect their to be an advisory (if there wasn't some horrific alignment issue on the car)

But if we take the OP's assertion at face value - if a suspension arm has rotted through to the point of failure, this isn't going to have been a process that occurred in 7 weeks, or even 7 years. Hence the likelihood of it being in a passable state 7 weeks ago is very very low. And therefore the garage would have questions to answer

May have been fine on the day of the test then you've gone out and hit a pothole/kerb and caused a fractured which has rusted over the last 2 months.

Garage has no liability here.

As I've alluded to above, the garage completely have liability if their trained technicians have signed off a vehicle as being safe and then a defect such as *significant* corrosion was found a few weeks later, which would have been present at the time of the MOT test because of the nature of the defect. Obviously this is with the caveat of taking *everything* that the OP has said at face value.

 

[ci_newman]

Agreed. I've seen several ball joints that have failed (and every single car i've seen with this failure has had it advised on the previous MOT which the owner clearly ignored), but i've never seen a chunk of metal like a wishbone rot through completely. OP, we'd need pictures of the failure point as i have a feeling that it has probably failed at the ball joint, and the wishbone hasn't rotted through. I've taken numerous suspension arms/wishbones off cars that are 20 years old and have 150k+ miles on the clock and none have ever been even in the same ball park as corroding so much that they rot through/fail. The only time I could potentially imagine this happening, is if a car had been parked in the ocean for 20 years.


And who is going to believe that the OP deviously removed his uncorroded and clean wishbone, found a wishbone online that was *almost* completely corroded through, got a garage to fit it, then put his wife and kids in the car and drove around as much as possible in the hope it would fail, just so he could have a chance at arguing with an MOT garage/VOSA about their culpability?


It does, but you have to look at it in the context of the alleged complaint - had this been a tyre that had worn away, and the OP had driven it for 7 weeks and 2000 miles since the MOT - then i completely agree. The tyre wear is possibly/likely to have been in a passable state when it was MOT'd, albeit you'd potentially expect their to be an advisory (if there wasn't some horrific alignment issue on the car)

But if we take the OP's assertion at face value - if a suspension arm has rotted through to the point of failure, this isn't going to have been a process that occurred in 7 weeks, or even 7 years. Hence the likelihood of it being in a passable state 7 weeks ago is very very low. And therefore the garage would have questions to answer


As I've alluded to above, the garage completely have liability if their trained technicians have signed off a vehicle as being safe and then a defect such as *significant* corrosion was found a few weeks later, which would have been present at the time of the MOT test because of the nature of the defect. Obviously this is with the caveat of taking *everything* that the OP has said at face value.

I wonder if the partner actually smacked a kerb... that would cause it to fail

 

[Haze]

Don't feed the troll


If it is genuine he should be seeking legal advice, not asking random people on a computer forum

And I thought in on mot, they can not go prodding things, and could have looked OK from the outside

 

[snowdog]

And who is going to believe that the OP deviously removed his uncorroded and clean wishbone, found a wishbone online that was *almost* completely corroded through, got a garage to fit it, then put his wife and kids in the car and drove around as much as possible in the hope it would fail, just so he could have a chance at arguing with an MOT garage/VOSA about their culpability?

He needs to prove the garage is at fault, he can't because plausibility is irrelevant, only facts.

I'm just being devil's advocate. The garage will not want to accept liability... Surely you can understand that?

 

[SexyGreyFox]

And I thought in on mot, they can not go prodding things, and could have looked OK from the outside

Back in the 70's, 80s & 90s they used to go round with a hammer
About the last 20 years I've had to leave my car there so haven't seen them doing an MOT.

 

[Hawk Tuah]

Last MOT I had with my Beetle they literally went through the form crossing everything off as not relevant.

I certainly wouldn't rely on an MOT as any indication that a car is safe. That's what I'd expect at a full service.

 

[DXP55]

Looks like ButterB has slipped off to somewhere else.

I to didn't realise they don't poke or whack the underside of your car any more. Or do they ?

My old 1965 Ford Zodiac was a rust box after 8 yrs - I just scrapped it. - My 2010 Focus must be sound as it's passed every year.
I am probably sitting in a rust box.

 

[norm]

OP, what car is it you were driving?

As said previously a lower control arm failing is unlikely through corrosion alone. Could it be a manufacturing defect?

 

[Hawk Tuah]

Don't worry. CompoHunter9000 hasn't returned.

 

[Chris Wilson]

Failure of a wishbone due to corrosion is very very unlikely. Those things are usually made of solid steel or cast iron. If it's been corroded badly enough to fail, its been in poor condition for many years.

It would have been picked up in a service too.

That's not actually true. TVR's are notorious for front wishbone failure, I think they made them from cutting up cheap office chairs. A friend was working on the front brakes of his wife's TVR and helped himself up by leaning on the upper wishbone. It crippled catastrophically, and later examination showed very severe internal corrosion. Externally, as in an MOT examination, it looked fine. The chassis's aren't much more durable...

The current MOT regulations state a tester cannot remove any (removable) closure panels to examine what he suspects is bad corrosion behind them, so there will be dangerous rust lurking on many MOT'd vehicles these days