Vans fall foul of MoT
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NEARLY 40 per cent of the light commercial vehicles which took an MoT test last year failed—mainly through brake faults (CM March 5).
Of the 593,100 commercial vehicles under 30cwt that took the test Transport Minister Dr John Gilbert told the Commons last week that 234,650 had failed; 137,000 had brake faults.
But only five per cent (30,700) of the failures were refused certificates because of their tyres.
Dr Gilbert gave these figures in reply to a question from Mr Greville Janner MP for West Leicester, who also asked the Minister to bring into force regulations allowing authorised testers to test any van or car offered for sale and making it an offence to stop a tester doing so.
The Minister also told Mr Janner that there was no means of recording the number of times any one vehicle fails the MoT test.
Vehicles testing carried out by the 60,000 DoE testers in this country is that best suited to the needs of Britain, according to Mr Ken Marks, UnderSecretary of State at the Department of the Environment.
"As a cost-beneficial test on the critical safety items of a vehicle, I believe that the test makes an effective contribution to road safety. But in seeking to improve this effectiveness I must not overrate the benefit of more elaborate testing, thus producing a situation in which the cost of testing is greatly increased with no discernible improvements in road safety," he said.
As part of a campaign to get the MoT test improved and made more stringent Mr Janner has asked over 50 questions on the test in this session of Parliament. On Friday he pressed Transport Minister Dr John Gilbert to allow more thorough testing for rust than the present thumb pressure test.
But Dr Gilbert was not going to be pushed into the modification of the rust test : "The method advocated is the best for determining the extent of corrosion without causing unnecessary damage to the vehicle," he told Mr Janner.
In a Thursday night/Friday morning adjournment debate Mr Marks told Mr Janner that the MoT test was not a guarantee of roadworthiness. "It cannot guarantee the complete roadworthiness of a vehicle. This is and must be the continuous responsibility of the motorist. It is one that I believe is usually carried out responsibly and well," he said.