Can I drive my car with a failed MOT?

badmemory

I am still positive that if a vehicle is on the road and would fail an MOT then it may as well have failed.  An MOT only signifies that a vehicle passed AT THE TIME.  It does not absolve you from having a vehicle which would pass it MOT at any time.

For example - if you are stopped nine months after passing your MOT & they find you have bald (illegal) tyres, just because you have a valid MOT does not mean that the bald tyres are OK.

Herzlos

I would have thought that too, but if it's not a "dangerous" failure then it's ok to drive. Temporarily and whilst waiting on it getting fixed, which should be done ASAP. 

For example, failing on emissions wouldn't make the car unroadworthy, whilst failing due to tyre treat would.

facade

TooManyPoints said:

In regards to the old MOT certificate once you have attended the MOT and have been issue a failure notice it invalidates the previous certificate 

Can you cite the legislation for that?

If it is not illegal why would ever MOT a car

Because eventually the "old" MoT will expire.

...when the insurer says no- we don't cover unroadworthy/modified vehicles... 

They will be telling lies. Section 148 of the RTA:

148. Avoidance of certain exceptions to policies 

(1)Where a policy …purports to restrict—

(a)the insurance of the persons insured by the policy, by reference to any of the matters mentioned in subsection (2) below shall, as respects such liabilities as are required to be covered by a policy under section 145 of this Act, be of no effect.

(2)Those matters are—

(a)the age or physical or mental condition of persons driving the vehicle,

(b)the condition of the vehicle, [my emphasis]

....etc. up to about (h)

In plain English, this means an insurer cannot deny the cover that is required by the Road Traffic Act on the basis of the condition of the vehicle. 

Any traffic police officer should know this. If he doesn’t and seizes the vehicle under s165, that seizure would be unlawful. 

I thought that 148 was the requirements of an RTA insurer in the event of a claim- they must cover third party liability but they can try and recover.

If the insurer says that the driver is not covered to drive the car because it is unroadworthy, then the driver has no cover at the moment.

Otherwise no-one could ever be prosecuted for driving without valid insurance so long as there is an RTA insurer on the car- e.g. when stopped delivering pizzas with only SDP & commuting cover, they could simply knock off, eat the pizza and go home without even a ticket. (as they are now driving within the terms of their policy, and before when they weren't they had RTA cover.)

The incident on TV was some lad who attracted attention with a loud exhaust, they stopped him and got the tyre gauges out and inspected the car, but couldn't find any mechanical defects except the exhaust, so they got a pencil & paper and listed every possible modification right down to stickers on the paint, then phoned the insurer to see if they were all declared, and the insurer must have voided the policy from inception* (they said cancelled, but I'm sure you can't backdate a cancellation to before the policy holder is informed) for not declaring mods so they nicked him for driving without insurance as well - which stuck according to the text overlay (or possibly he just accepted a FPN rather than plead a case).  

In the fly in the car discussion, the Police were chuffed that they had got him off the road as "if there had been an accident any other people involved would get nothing" (so they don't know about RTA insurers, or even the MIB scheme...)

 

*Maybe there is some nuance that I am missing, but he had a certificate that was valid while he was driving, and must have then been voided as if it didn't exist after he drove, but the non-existence got backdated to before he drove so he was actually driving without one..

I know we are concerned with a defect that won't pass MOT rather than a modification, and usually the Ombudsman rules that if a defect has nothing to do with any accident that the insurer should pay out in full, but it is still a term of some policies that the vehicle be roadworthy.

Aretnap

facade said:

TooManyPoints said:

In regards to the old MOT certificate once you have attended the MOT and have been issue a failure notice it invalidates the previous certificate 

Can you cite the legislation for that?

If it is not illegal why would ever MOT a car

Because eventually the "old" MoT will expire.

...when the insurer says no- we don't cover unroadworthy/modified vehicles... 

They will be telling lies. Section 148 of the RTA:

148. Avoidance of certain exceptions to policies 

(1)Where a policy …purports to restrict—

(a)the insurance of the persons insured by the policy, by reference to any of the matters mentioned in subsection (2) below shall, as respects such liabilities as are required to be covered by a policy under section 145 of this Act, be of no effect.

(2)Those matters are—

(a)the age or physical or mental condition of persons driving the vehicle,

(b)the condition of the vehicle, [my emphasis]

....etc. up to about (h)

In plain English, this means an insurer cannot deny the cover that is required by the Road Traffic Act on the basis of the condition of the vehicle. 

Any traffic police officer should know this. If he doesn’t and seizes the vehicle under s165, that seizure would be unlawful. 

I thought that 148 was the requirements of an RTA insurer in the event of a claim- they must cover third party liability but they can try and recover.

If the insurer says that the driver is not covered to drive the car because it is unroadworthy, then the driver has no cover at the moment.

Otherwise no-one could ever be prosecuted for driving without valid insurance so long as there is an RTA insurer on the car- e.g. when stopped delivering pizzas with only SDP & commuting cover, they could simply knock off, eat the pizza and go home without even a ticket. (as they are now driving within the terms of their policy, and before when they weren't they had RTA cover.)

S148 is an unusual one. If you read it closely you'll see that it actually modifies the terms of your policy, at least as far as the bare minimum legally requires cover goes. So as far as the law is concerned, your policy does cover you to drive an unroadworthy vehicle, whatever words the insurer uses in the policy documents. 

(It does give the insurer the right to recover it's costs from you if it is forced to pay out solely because of s148, but that doesn't mean that you committed an offense of driving without insurance) 

It's different to the situation of driving when you are not named on the policy (RTA s151) or driving for a purpose not specified on the policy (which actually comes under the MIB agreement, not the Road Traffic Act) where the law provides a mechanism to force your insure to pay out to third parties but doesn't modify the terms of your policy - so you are still driving without being covered by an insurance policy. 

It's counter intuitive but the law protecting third parties from uninsured drivers has evolved over time and is a patchwork of different measures which cover different scenarios and work in different ways. Some of them give the driver a defence to driving without insurance and some don't.

Aretnap

TadleyBaggie said:

gov.uk says:

Driving a vehicle that’s failed

You can take your vehicle away if:

• your current MOT is still valid
• no ‘dangerous’ problems were listed in the MOT

Otherwise, you’ll need to get it repaired before you can drive.

If you can take your vehicle away, it must still meet the minimum standards of roadworthiness at all times.

As is often the case the government website is not quite the whole truth. It's the fact that your car has a dangerous defect which makes it illegal to drive, not the fact that the MOT tester has just told you that it has a dangerous defect. MOT testers are not infallible, so if your tester fails your car and tells you that it has four bald tyres, brake pads worn down to the rivets and a steering column which is about to snap then if you think he's talking rubbish then you can drive it away perfectly legally - so long as you are right.

The government website isn't going to put it like that for obvious reasons (and I don't recommend that you actually do it either) - but that's the law. The old MOT certificate remains valid for a year come what may - it just doesn't give you a defence to driving a vehicle in a dangerous condition at any time.

Aretnap

badmemory said:

I am still positive that if a vehicle is on the road and would fail an MOT then it may as well have failed.  An MOT only signifies that a vehicle passed AT THE TIME.  It does not absolve you from having a vehicle which would pass it MOT at any time.

For example - if you are stopped nine months after passing your MOT & they find you have bald (illegal) tyres, just because you have a valid MOT does not mean that the bald tyres are OK.

Indeed, but the converse of that is that if your car fails an MOT because it has a bald tyre, but it does not in fact have a bald tyre (perhaps you replaced it immediately and didn't hang around for a retest, or perhaps the tester was just plain overzealous with his measurement), then it's not illegal to drive, so long as the original certificate remains in force. 

There are three separate offences:

Driving a vehicle without a current test certificate
Driving a vehicle which doesn't meet the construction and use regulatioms and
Driving a vehicle in a dangerous condition

and they are completely independent of each other. It's quite possible for a vehicle to be in a dangerous condition and still have a valid test certificate, and it's quite possible for a vehicle to have no valid MOT certificate but not be in a dangerous condition.

Mildly_Miffed

Aretnap said:

There are three separate offences:

Driving a vehicle without a current test certificate
Driving a vehicle which doesn't meet the construction and use regulatioms and
Driving a vehicle in a dangerous condition

and they are completely independent of each other. It's quite possible for a vehicle to be in a dangerous condition and still have a valid test certificate, and it's quite possible for a vehicle to have no valid MOT certificate but not be in a dangerous condition.

^ THIS

The car has an MOT. The old one has not expired. The fail does not negate it, only time does. Go to https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk/ and it will still be green as having a current test.

The car may or may not be roadworthy. If it is not roadworthy, it is illegal to drive. It is no more or less illegal to drive it HOME from the failed test as it was to drive it TO that failed test. It was very likely unroadworthy and thereby illegal to drive it last week, before the test was even booked.

If the problem that rendered it unroadworthy is fixed, but the test is not redone, it could easily be legal to drive it after the failed test while it was illegal to drive it before.

funnymonkey

Thank you very much for all your answers.
I should have provided more details.
The car failed on having smokey headlights, not a tiny bit just through aging.
I planned on getting them treated before the MOT but the garage was unable to fit me in on time.

I'm still confused on whether I can drive the car as there's so many conflicting answers.
Thank you

MattMattMattUK

funnymonkey said:

Thank you very much for all your answers.
I should have provided more details.
The car failed on having smokey headlights, not a tiny bit just through aging.
I planned on getting them treated before the MOT but the garage was unable to fit me in on time.

I'm still confused on whether I can drive the car as there's so many conflicting answers.
Thank you

Did they list it as Minor or Major? If Minor then in theory yes, during conditions that do not require headlights, outside of that or if Major, then no.

Aretnap

funnymonkey said:

Thank you very much for all your answers.
I should have provided more details.
The car failed on having smokey headlights, not a tiny bit just through aging.
I planned on getting them treated before the MOT but the garage was unable to fit me in on time.

I'm still confused on whether I can drive the car as there's so many conflicting answers.
Thank you

During daylight hours you are fine to use it so long as you have made arrangements to have it fixed as soon as you reasonably can (ie you have it booked into a garage somewhere). See paragraph 3(c) here.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/1796/regulation/23

Outside daylight hours it would depend on how just bad it is, the regulations just say that it has to be "in good working order and clean". If it's bad enough to fail an MOT I guess it's not in good working order...