MOT failure - can I drive car

BillScarab

The following is taken from the directgov website

"
The need for an MOT certificate

It is generally an offence to use on a public road, a vehicle of testable age that doesn’t have a current test certificate, except when:

• taking it to a test station for a test booked in advance
• bringing it away from a test station after it has failed the test, to a place of repair
• taking it to or bringing it away from a place where, by previous arrangement, repairs are to be made or have been made to fix the problems that caused the vehicle to fail its test

Even in the above circumstances you may still be prosecuted for driving an unroadworthy vehicle if it doesn’t comply with various Regulations affecting its construction and use. Additionally the insurance may not be valid."

Link here So yes you can legally drive it without an MOT to and from a place of repair or to and from a testing station but if the items that caused the fail make it unroadworthy you could be breaking the law still (although a different one).

Wig

BillScarab wrote: »

The following is taken from the directgov website

"
The need for an MOT certificate

It is generally an offence to use on a public road, a vehicle of testable age that doesn’t have a current test certificate, except when:

• taking it to a test station for a test booked in advance
• bringing it away from a test station after it has failed the test, to a place of repair
• taking it to or bringing it away from a place where, by previous arrangement, repairs are to be made or have been made to fix the problems that caused the vehicle to fail its test

Even in the above circumstances you may still be prosecuted for driving an unroadworthy vehicle if it doesn’t comply with various Regulations affecting its construction and use. Additionally the insurance may not be valid."

Link here So yes you can legally drive it without an MOT to and from a place of repair or to and from a testing station but if the items that caused the fail make it unroadworthy you could be breaking the law still (although a different one).

That is a contradiction though, the great majority of MOT fail items (if not all) would render a vehicle unroadworthy, the only one I can think of that would not be would be lamps during daylight hours.

What MOT fail items can you think of which would not render the vehicle unroadworthy? To draw conclusion from that bit of text that you can LEGALLY drive away from an MOT fail is entirely wrong IMHO.

BillScarab

Not sure, but preumably emissions wouldn't make it unroadworthy. Obscured numberplate maybe? Would a passenger door that couldn't be opened make it unroadworthy? Insecure passenger seat? Noisy exhaust?

I know the majority of people drive MOT failures from the testing station to a place of repair and back again. I don't know anyone who has ever towed or trailered one away. To be honest I think the police have got better things to do so unless your car was obviously dangerous just by looking at it you're unlikely to be stopped and unlikely to be prosecuted.

Wig

I have just googled various definitions of unroadworthy, and it is not defined (which as usual in law is a fat lot of good), but is basically something that would make the vehicle unsafe.

Which leads me to think that there would be a few MOT fail items that would not make a vehicle unsafe.

But then the thought comes to mind, the car would be in contravention of construction and use regulations, Not neccesarily unroadworthy but still an offence. We can't conclude that just because the various quotes from government only refer to 'unroadworthy', therefore that C&U regs can be broken for the purposes of MOT. Unless they specifically say so in legislation that C&U regs can be broken for MOT appointment travel, we have to assume that it would be illegal to drive the car, once failed, and if the fail was correctly issued.

I agree the police have enough to do, what I am concerned with is uncovering the what the legal truth is to the situation. I drive my cars away from MOT fails - it doesn't bother me, I've been driving the same car for weeks previously, what is one more journey going to do?


I don't think it is as simple as these snippets are making it out to be.

in2deep_2

Did anyone actualy read my previous post.?????

Well the answer does not seem to be found on any of the government information about the MOT test, so we emailed VOSA with this question and this is their response:

"An MOT certificate is valid until its expiry date. However if your vehicle fails a test before this date and you do not rectify the defects then you are driving an unroadworthy vehicle which is an offence."

So to put this into context if your car fails the MOT due to illegal tyres then you are driving an unroadworthy vehicle, you were driving unroadworthy vehicle before the MOT, and you will be driving an unroadworthy vehicle until you get a new tyre. Therefore at anytime if caught you would be subject to a £2500 fine and 3 points per illegal tyre.
However once you get a new tyre your car is roadworthy and the old MOT is still valid until its expiry date, thus you can then drive your car again and get it retested to your timescale, with out worrying about driving without an MOT.
This is a very good reason to book your Mot early and give yourself plenty of time to book a retest if needed.


So basically you are NOT legal until its fixed regardless of the current test certificate

Wig

Yes I did read your post, but I wanted to delve deeper into the issue of why government sites say you can drive the failed car away to a place of repair subject to "unroadworthy" being a serious offence.

In my investigations I found that "unroadworthy" is not defined in the act. but refers to faults in brakes, steering, tyres, gears weight, which make the vehicle unsafe.

I then determined that a lot of the fail items would not make a vehicle unsafe, and therefore not unroadworthy. Which made me think about Construction and Use regulations.

I have since come to the conclusion that every single fail item on an MOT would be a Construction and Use violation and would therefore make the journey illegal except lamps.

I read your post and it is incorrect but also correct, it picks a serious fail item (tyres) and gives a stated opinion based on that item alone. What I wanted to address was the advice given by various websites that you can lawfully move your car to a place of repair, and not to choose such an easily categorised fail item (tyres). How about horn not working? Not serious, not unroadworthy and yet no doubt in violation of construction and use.

The websites would all have you believe that you can drive such a car to a place of repair. But there is no legislation which exempts vehicles coming from a failed MOT test from having to comply with RTA 1988 Section 41 construction and use. So you could still get something like a fixed penalty ticket. Which means the government advice is wrong, and the government is encouraging people to break the law - the test MOT test fees for one thing talk about taking the vehicle away from the test station.

I'm not sure if you actually got that response by emailing VOSA or not, but I have seen that very quote word for word on a non-VOSA MOT website. So I dunno if you copied it from there or if the person at VOSA copied it from there or what. But I can tell you that emailing VOSA is not a guaranteed way of getting to the truth about things, the emails are manned by numpties who don't know what they are talking about. The advice is incorrect because not every fail would mean the car is unroadworthy.
http://www.mottest.net/mot/mot-failure-question/

Anyway, I'm just waffling and repeating myself. I hope people can see what point I am making.

redux

My car failed on a front sidelight bulb, which I'd checked 3 days before the test. I drove home and changed it, rather than clutter up the test site car park for a while on something that is quite fiddly, perhaps until after they closed, then came back the next morning.

Another fail was because the seat height adjustment wasn't working properly and the tester didn't like it being loose. He suggested it was quite simple to fix, get the trim off the side of the seat, and that one or two screws had probably come loose inside and fallen out. Clearly he intended that I took the car home to do the work if I wanted to.

A fail certificate may also include a notice that in the opinion of the tester the car is unsafe to drive. In such a case you'd have to either ask them to do repairs, or arrange to take the car away on a trailer.

So I'd assume that in the lack of such a notice, and with an existing pass that has not expired (making the remarks above not quite applicable about going to a test without an MOT), that driving the car is permissible, away from the test and back to the appointment for the retest, and that the test centre would have fairly clearly advised against it if it wasn't. I wouldn't start making guesses about continuing other ordinary use though, which I'd suggest avoiding or minimising.

Though the thread has been here long enough that the OP will have resolved this by now, either repair or disposal, anyone in a similar situation might ask the test station for their advice.

Wig

redux wrote: »

So I'd assume that in the lack of such a notice, and with an existing pass that has not expired (making the remarks above not quite applicable about going to a test without an MOT), that driving the car is permissible, away from the test and back to the appointment for the retest, and that the test centre would have fairly clearly advised against it if it wasn't. I wouldn't start making guesses about continuing other ordinary use though, which I'd suggest avoiding or minimising.

In practice, thousands of people drive away cars from MOT with minor faults everyday, in practice, it's ok to do it because no-one cares and you won't get caught. But I am trying to state the exact truth about the legality of doing that. I'm not saying "don't do this it's illegal".

There is no exemption -in law- from construction and use regs, however minor the fault, in going to or from an MOT test, in doing it you are guilty of an offence. I am as certain as can be about that.