The MoT (short for the now defunct Ministry of Transport) test is just like any other periodic technical checkup that gives cars legal access to the public roadways. These tests are done with little leniency but even so, some 15 percent of the cars they let through are actually unfit to pass.
AutoExpress published some of its own research on the matter through which it came up with the above percentage. On top of this the UK publication says some 11 percent of fails are actually passes, according to information from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) quoted by the source.
The information gets a bit more detailed too. For instance, out of the 15 percent of cars deemed unfit to pass, 13 percent should have been completely banned from the road suffering major faults.
The final bit of information concerns new cars sold in the UK; 9 percent of them apparently fail their first MoT which they have to take three years after being bought. To put this into perspective, out of the 2.4 million cars purchased in 2014, over 200,000 of them would not pass their 2017 technical inspection.
This could apparently warrant a mandatory inspection for all new cars before they reach customers, but that’s a topic of debate and has yet to be fully explored.
And don’t think this is an isolated case and it’s probably the same in pretty much most other countries, if not worse…