MOT fail - immediate restriction on using vehicle ?

[Aretnap]

In addition to what's been said, another reason why a vehicle which has just failed an MOT is not always illegal to drive is because it is only illegal to drive if it actually *is* unroadworthy, and MOT testers are not infallible. (Apparently there are even some dodgy ones out there who have been known to fail cars on dubious points in order to drum up business for their garage). If your tester fails your car on the grounds that it has four bald tyres, brake pads worn down to the rivets and a steering column that's about to snap then if you think he's talking bks you can still drive it perfectly legally - but only if you're right, of course.

Also, assuming there is a problem which makes the car illegal to drive, you can drive it as soon as the problem is fixed, just as you can with any other problem that arises at any other time in the year. You don't actually have to get a retest done until the existing certificate expires, though of course in practice it will often be convenient/cheapest to get it retested as soon as the repairs are done.

[brrapp]

Maybe I'm just lucky but I completely trust my local MOT guy, if he says the car is dangerous, I won't drive it , if he advises me take it home to get something fixed, I will. There are plenty of them out there, if you don't have complete trust in the one you currently use, then find a better one.

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

The MOT is valid until it expires.
The MOT man can't stop you driving away with a failed car no matter what sort of state it's in.
My car is still taxed and MOT'ed for a couple of weeks, but it failed on Saturday. I've fixed all the faults already, and I'll be getting a re-test on Saturday. I'm still using the car this week.
It's up to the owner to decide if the car is roadworthy or not - if the MOT man says it's dangerous and shouldn't be driven and you drive it anyway, then that's your own risk.

[LandRoverManiac]

The basic issue that causes needless confusion for people is that 'MOT Certificate' does not equal 'roadworthy' and visa versa. You could drive away from a freshly-passed MOT, drive down the road a few yards and run over a nail - bang goes tyre - no longer roadworthy despite that bit of paper you have from the testing station.

The rules do state you can drive TO and FROM a pre-booked test - so long as the vehicle is roadworthy and that you are taking it back to a place of repair (which can be a garage, your house, a friend's house - so long as it is the location where you intend to remedy/fix the fault).

Now if one side of the suspension has collapsed or the brakes don't work - then that's fairly black-and-white in being 'unroadworthy'. Most people wouldn't need the advice of a garage to tell them that driving the thing is a bad idea..... If you do drive it and get pulled - whether you have an MOT or not is kind of a moot point.

If you fail the MOT due to washer jets not working or a number plate bulb gone I highly doubt any policeman, MOT tester or normal rational individual in-between would have any issue with you driving the vehicle back home to fix it. It doesn't have a valid MOT on that drive back - but could that vehicle be considered 'unroadworthy' in the scheme of things? No.

At the end of the day - it's your call (as the vehicle owner). I work on my own vehicles and the one or two MOT failures have been on something like a split suspension dust cover or slightly too-high lambda emissions. I'll drive it back home to fix it with a clear conscience - since it is unlikely to affect the safety/road-worthyness of the vehicle in the short time time it's on it's way back from the test centre.

Most garages/test stations are pretty sensible about this (not had any issues myself with our local village station - helps to be on good terms with the MOT tester/garage owner) - but some (certain service chains which shall not be named) will happily use the above fuzzy logic to get some extra work.

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

The question was - is the current MOT cert still valid if the car fails an MOT early (whilst the original cert is still valid), to which the answer is 'Yes' no matter what it failed on. The current cert can't be invalidated by a fresh MOT failure within the 12 months.

[Sheepshanks]

TooMany2cvs said:

If it's illegally unroadworthy now (what's the welding?), then it was illegally unroadworthy the day before he took it in for the MOT - and would have been illegally unroadworthy for the next two weeks even if he'd left it to the last minute to retest it.

If it IS illegal to use, then it's illegal because of the unroadworthiness, not because of the MOT, and not because of his knowledge of the unroadworthiness.

His knowledge of the unroadworthiness may make a big difference though if he ends up in court or making an insurance claim.

[TooMany2cvs]

Sheepshanks said:

TooMany2cvs said:

If it's illegally unroadworthy now (what's the welding?), then it was illegally unroadworthy the day before he took it in for the MOT - and would have been illegally unroadworthy for the next two weeks even if he'd left it to the last minute to retest it.

If it IS illegal to use, then it's illegal because of the unroadworthiness, not because of the MOT, and not because of his knowledge of the unroadworthiness.

His knowledge of the unroadworthiness may make a big difference though if he ends up in court or making an insurance claim.

So if you get tugged for a bald tyre, you'd get let off if you convinced Mr Plod that you didn't know it was bald?

[Sheepshanks]

TooMany2cvs said:

So if you get tugged for a bald tyre, you'd get let off if you convinced Mr Plod that you didn't know it was bald?

IMHO it's a matter of whether the ordinary person should know.

Owners should check their tyres. But it's not reasonable to expect owners to go crawling under their car checking for corrosion.

[TooMany2cvs]

Sheepshanks said:

TooMany2cvs said:

So if you get tugged for a bald tyre, you'd get let off if you convinced Mr Plod that you didn't know it was bald?

IMHO it's a matter of whether the ordinary person should know.

Owners should check their tyres. But it's not reasonable to expect owners to go crawling under their car checking for corrosion.

I suspect "the ordinary person" would strongly argue that checking their tyres is above and beyond the call of duty...

[Sheepshanks]

TooMany2cvs said:

I suspect "the ordinary person" would strongly argue that checking their tyres is above and beyond the call of duty...

I knew you'd come back with that!

Isn't it part of the driving test now?

[TooMany2cvs]

Sheepshanks said:

TooMany2cvs said:

I suspect "the ordinary person" would strongly argue that checking their tyres is above and beyond the call of duty...

I knew you'd come back with that!

Isn't it part of the driving test now?

For the last decade and a half, yes.

And, as we all know, every driver remembers everything they needed to know for their test, and puts it into practice at all times...

[Sheepshanks]

TooMany2cvs said:

For the last decade and a half, yes.

And, as we all know, every driver remembers everything they needed to know for their test, and puts it into practice at all times...

For the purposes of this point it doesn't matter. You could have no defence against having a bald tyre. If the car was previously MOT'd without issue then it would be reasonable to claim ignorance of corrosion.

[Aretnap]

Sheepshanks said:

TooMany2cvs said:

For the last decade and a half, yes.

And, as we all know, every driver remembers everything they needed to know for their test, and puts it into practice at all times...

For the purposes of this point it doesn't matter. You could have no defence against having a bald tyre. If the car was previously MOT'd without issue then it would be reasonable to claim ignorance of corrosion.

The law doesn't provide a defence as such, but it does provide for a reduction in penalty - the court should not impose points (and by implication, probably not a fine either, though that's down to their discretion) if the driver had no reasonable cause to suspect that the vehicle was dangerous. See Road Traffic Offenders Act Section 48.

What's "reasonable cause" is ultimately down to a court to decide - arguably it is certainly reasonable to expect a driver to inspect his tyres regularly, the darker corners of the underside of his car not so much.

I agree that if he'd been warned by a professional (eg an MOT tester) that the car was dangerous, that would scupper his argument that he had no reasonable cause to suspect that it was.

[Aretnap]

brrapp said:

Maybe I'm just lucky but I completely trust my local MOT guy, if he says the car is dangerous, I won't drive it , if he advises me take it home to get something fixed, I will. There are plenty of them out there, if you don't have complete trust in the one you currently use, then find a better one.

Yes, of course. However I was offering a hypothetical example of why it might be legal to drive a car which has just failed an MOT. It wasn't intended as a comment on any particular MOT tester, or even MOT testers in general (still less a suggestion that you should actually drive a car which a mechanic has told you is a death trap).

[Vipers]

xjay1337 said:

I believe MOT's are valid till their expiry.

The question is whether you would then be in trouble for using the vehicle... For welding, probably not.. for bald tired / worn bushes... probably....

So you MOT has 4 weeks to run, you get it MOT'd, garage says you have two bald tyres, so it failed, you drive it away, and get stopped by plod dont think it would wash if you argued the MOT had 4 weeks to run.

[TooMany2cvs]

Vipers said:

xjay1337 said:

I believe MOT's are valid till their expiry.

The question is whether you would then be in trouble for using the vehicle... For welding, probably not.. for bald tired / worn bushes... probably....

So you MOT has 4 weeks to run, you get it MOT'd, garage says you have two bald tyres, so it failed, you drive it away, and get stopped by plod dont think it would wash if you argued the MOT had 4 weeks to run.

Would the situation be any different to if you were stopped with two bald tyres, and you hadn't taken it for a test?

[Vipers]

TooMany2cvs said:

Vipers said:

xjay1337 said:

I believe MOT's are valid till their expiry.

The question is whether you would then be in trouble for using the vehicle... For welding, probably not.. for bald tired / worn bushes... probably....

So you MOT has 4 weeks to run, you get it MOT'd, garage says you have two bald tyres, so it failed, you drive it away, and get stopped by plod dont think it would wash if you argued the MOT had 4 weeks to run.

Would the situation be any different to if you were stopped with two bald tyres, and you hadn't taken it for a test?

The outcome, no different. I was merely saying I dont think a valid MOT is still current if another one fails it.

[Piersman2]

Vipers said:

The outcome, no different. I was merely saying I dont think a valid MOT is still current if another one fails it.

You think wrong then. It is.

[TooMany2cvs]

Vipers said:

TooMany2cvs said:

Vipers said:

xjay1337 said:

I believe MOT's are valid till their expiry.

The question is whether you would then be in trouble for using the vehicle... For welding, probably not.. for bald tired / worn bushes... probably....

So you MOT has 4 weeks to run, you get it MOT'd, garage says you have two bald tyres, so it failed, you drive it away, and get stopped by plod dont think it would wash if you argued the MOT had 4 weeks to run.

Would the situation be any different to if you were stopped with two bald tyres, and you hadn't taken it for a test?

The outcome, no different.

Indeed. Because you wouldn't be getting a tug for "no MOT", but for "two bald tyres".

Vipers said:

I was merely saying I dont think a valid MOT is still current if another one fails it.

So you're saying that if you went and changed those tyres, the car would still be illegal to use until you retested it?

[KevinCamaroSS]

Vipers said:

So you MOT has 4 weeks to run, you get it MOT'd, garage says you have two bald tyres, so it failed, you drive it away, and get stopped by plod dont think it would wash if you argued the MOT had 4 weeks to run.

Did you actually read the rest of this thread?

An MOT is valid until the expiry date regardless. A car may also be unroadworthy during that period. The offence would be driving a car in an unroadworthy condition (your two bald tyres as an example), not driving without an MOT.