The 'Danger' Box – MOT Testing and road safety
“…dangerous to drive…”
Whenever an MOT Tester decides a vehicle should fail the MOT Test, there is an option to declare that one or more of the defects discovered render the vehicle ‘dangerous to drive…’. This is stated in a box at the bottom left of the failure certificate, and the dangerous items are noted as such in bold, and starred in the failure list within the body text of the document. VOSA designate these as ‘D-box’ entries.
I have obtained further details for these ‘D-box’ entries from VOSA. For the year ending 31st March 2010, there were some 816,839 vehicles listed with this ‘D-box’ entry, with, altogether about 1.2 million defects considered dangerous by MOT Testers. Generally these vehicles are either left at the VTS for repair, or the owner has the vehicle scrapped. This means that as the result of the MOT test, every day over that year, 2,238 vehicles were declared by MOT Testers to be dangerous to drive on the road, having altogether 3,287 associated dangerous defects.
DfT report: ‘Fatalities reported road accidents: 2008 – Road Accident Statistics Factsheet No. 2 – 2010
In this useful DfT report there is a section headed “Why do fatal accidents happen?” The first paragraph entitled “Contributory factors:”, states:
“Details of factors contributing to injury accidents are recorded by the police officer attending the scene of the accident. Whilst it is not possible to determine blame from these contributory factors they may offer some insight into why the accident happened. Not all accidents have these factors recorded (i.e. only accidents where a police officer attended the scene can be given factors) and an accident can be given more than one factor. • A third of fatalities resulting from reported personal injury road accidents had the contributory factor ‘Loss of control’ attributed to the accident. 22 per cent had ‘Failed to look properly’ and 17 per cent had ‘Careless, reckless or in a hurry.”
This fully reinforces that accident causation is not nationally recorded in any consistent, regular or statistically sound manner.
Update to MOT 'Danger Box' article
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More dangerous vehicles on the roads than previously thought.
In the last edition of MOT Testing magazine it was revealed that well over 800,000 cars examined by MOT Testers are found to have defects which render the vehicles dangerous to drive – every year. That’s over 2,200 cars every day of the week!
Further investigation, however, has revealed that this is a low estimate because, owing to an administrative glitch, it does not take into account all vehicles which have failed the MOT Test.
About a third of all MOT failures discovered during an MOT examination are repaired then and there, and whilst an MOT failure is recorded, following immediate rectification, a pass certificate is issued to the customer. For these so called, ‘PRS’ MOT Tests which VOSA simultaneously record as a failure and a re-test, if the defect, before correction, would have rendered the vehicle ‘dangerous to drive on the roads’ the MOT Tester has no way of recording that on the computer.
A rule of thumb calculation indicates that these uncounted ‘Danger box’ entries onto the computer could mean that between 100,000 to 200,000 vehicles found by MOT Testers to have dangerous defects - in addition to those already counted - have not been recorded onto the MOT Computer.
This means that every year Testers discover between 900,000 to 1M vehicles which have been driven to the Testing Station with defects that would render those vehicles dangerous to drive on the roads. It can be reasonably concluded that most people driving these vehicles to the Testing Stations were unaware of the defects detected by MOT Testers.
Evidently with two yearly MOTs, included in the prospective review of the MOT Scheme by the Government, that would mean a significant increase in these already appalling numbers.
Jim Punter
Editor MOT Testing Magazine
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Road deaths – DfT report ‘Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2010’
This report has two sets of data, which taken together are interesting. On page 1 it shows that of 15 key countries world-wide (including the main EU countries of Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Spain and so on), Britain is the third highest, in terms of percentage of passenger transport by car, after the USA and Norway.
Yet on page three, regarding road deaths per million people, in 2009, of all the OECD countries, Great Britain had the lowest death rate – with the USA fourth from bottom (Norway doesn’t feature in the table).
The clear implication being that despite vehicle usage being almost the highest world-wide, Britain has the safest roads. Evidently higher vehicle use is going to result in greater prevalence of vehicle defects – the reduction of which is greatly facilitated by more frequent MOTs.
Perhaps the removal of over 2,000 ‘dangerous’ vehicles every day by the MOT scheme makes a significant contribution to the situation whereby the country (Britain), with the third highest vehicle passenger usage, also has the lowest road death rate.
MOT Compliance
Here, I would direct you to the information contained in VOSA’s ‘Effectiveness report’, wherein it is stated that the MOT ‘error rate’ currently runs at 17%. I have contacted VOSA, however, and have discovered that more of those Tester errors concerned passes that should have failed than the other way round. Clearly, if such errors were applied to D-box entries, there would be likely to be more ‘dangerous’ defects discovered, not less. (Incidentally, this also means that the current failure rate of 40% for Class IV vehicles should, in fact, be higher).
VOSA prohibitions
A notable aspect of work VOSA carries out regarding road-safety concerns their roadside checks wherein they flag a ‘targeted’ vehicle down, carry out a relatively cursory inspection and issue a prohibition notice (at whatever level), should a vehicle carry a defect. In 2009/10, VOSA issued 24,730 such prohibitions (compare that to over 800,000 D-box entries). But what is most interesting is that a large proportion of these (over 5,000 out of 7,000 – a 73% failure rate) were issued to vehicles which, whilst having an ‘MOT-testable’ chassis type, were – due to the nature of their use, exempt from the MOT, so have never been subjected to MOT Test. Perhaps here is a really useful insight into the significance and contribution to road safety of an annual MOT.
Conclusions
1. Without the annual MOT, well over three quarters of a million cars would be in continued use on our roads with at least one dangerous defect, and on overage 1.5 defects. With two yearly MOTs, that number would be likely to double, posing an even greater threat to road safety.
2. Given VOSA’s MOT compliance findings wherein Tester errors erred on the side of passes that should have been failures – the real danger box numbers could be greater.
3. That despite having the third greatest vehicle usage for road passenger carriage world-wide in the OECD countries, Great Britain has the safest roads. By taking so many dangerous vehicles off the road every day, the MOT must be making a significant contribution to the country’s ‘best in the world’ road safety record.
4. Despite the undoubtedly useful contribution to road safety of VOSA’s vehicle roadside checks resulting in almost 25,000 prohibitions being issued in their last year of operation, their numbers are relatively small compared to the 816,893 dangerous defects discovered in MOT Testing stations in 2009/10.
5. Any attempt by TRL to ‘statistically’ link vehicle accidents to vehicle defects is almost bound to be a fruitless task due to the manner in which causation is recorded – as noted by the DfT itself in its own report. The only ‘hard evidence’ around relating vehicle condition to road safety is the number of vehicles detected in MOT Testing stations as being in a dangerous condition to drive on the roads.
6. The unexpectedly large numbers of vehicles discovered to have dangerous defects during an MOT Test must, surely, provide good evidence to have more regular (than annual) MOT Testing (not less) of the key road safety vehicle components comprising the main danger box items; for example brakes, suspension, tyres, lights and fuel leaks (see attachment ‘danger box details’).
Jim Punter
February 4th 2010