New MOT regs

rocktron

p90fool said:

rocktron said:

Major and Dangerous fault will result in an immediate ban, but Dangerous faults render a car illegal to drive on UK roads, until the issue is resolved and the car is retested.

What's the difference between an immediate ban and being rendered illegal to drive on UK roads?

That doesn't make any sense, I can't believe that's VOSA's wording.

Kindly see my second post in this thread.

m_c

All they are doing is essentially renaming the existing framework.
Advisories become Minor faults.
Failure items become Major faults.
And there has always been the option for a tester to class a failure as dangerous, and advise that the vehicle should not be driven from the test centre.

Outwith the new test items, the big change is a failure now invalidates any existing mot, which was always a bit of a grey area anyway.
The ability to drive to/from a test centre/repairer isn't changing. All a tester can do is advise you the vehicle is not roadworthy and/or dangerous, they can't stop you from driving it away. The only people who can do that are the police or authorised VOSA examiners, which do not include your typical mot tester.

All the flapping from the RAC is just to get their name out. Mot inspection standards have always been open to interpretation, and other than the new testable items, it's really only a rewording exercise.

Bridgehouse

I find the diesel thing quite amusing to be honest 

I have a diesel, and it’s a 2018 - so it’s probably fairly clean. It’s also the cheapest way of doing the 30k miles a year I do. Anything else would be economical suicide. 

I cant wait for an electric with 500 miles of range - would get one in an instant.

However, and here’s the BIG However - the move from diesel is quite cynical - it’s to remove pollution in cities. The new favourites for the government don’t consider environmental damage to manufacture (esp for batteries) and how the electricity is produced that we stick into our new super clean cars. 

Cos personally burning coal is clearly much better for the environment than burning diesel.

ICBM

MtB said:

Yup, get yerself a pre-1978 car or motorbike. 

From 20 May 2018 the MOT test for vehicles over 40 years old will be abolished. It means that cars and bikes will simultaneously become MOT and VED-exempt the moment they hit 40.

This also makes no sense. Cars made before 1978 were mostly death-traps by modern standards *anyway*, so allowing them to have a free pass of the MOT is really stupid. The vast majority of sensible classic car owners who maintain their cars often much better than new cars wouldn't have any problem with them passing a test - although it's true that there may need to be a specialist MOT for older cars like this, since they often don't meet modern regulations in several ways. There are probably still a small minority of old cars that really shouldn't be on the road at all though, and this will now let them be driven with no real checks.

m_c

@Bridgehouse you raise a couple very valid points. The other big problem is the electric distribution grid just isn't big enough to handle a large move to electric cars.

@ICBM how many 40 year old cars are still on the road?
I do think more road side checks should be done, and I'm sure VOSA will do more targeted checks, but the basic still stands that if you're involved in an accident with an unroadworthy vehicle, then you're going to be liable for it. The police can impound the vehicle and get it independently checked, and insurance examiners will soon pickup on any issues that will allow them to invalidate policies.
In context though, there will be far more newer vehicles that have scraped through their last mot with a list of advisories and not been fixed, and are in far less roadworthy condition than much older vehicles. What do you think poses the bigger risk to the general public, a clapped out old Cortina that's likely to collapse in a pile of rust at the next bump in the road, or a 8 year old high performance BMW with a bottom ball joint ready to pop-out and loose control at the same bump?

ICBM

m_c said:

@ICBM how many 40 year old cars are still on the road?

Not many, but I do know of one which definitely shouldn't be in my opinion!

Funkfingers

ICBM said:
Cars made before 1978 were mostly death-traps by modern standards *anyway*

Yes, in the sense that car designs of those times made no concessions whatsoever to crash survivability. Volvo began to use it as a selling point in the late Seventies. Motorcyclists at the time took the view that this made Volvo drivers complacent and, consequently, a hazard to two-wheeled traffic.

Older members of this forum will very probably have experienced daily driving in the *proper* Issigonis BMC/Leyland Mini. In the event of a frontal collision, the crumple zone was YOUR KNEES.

ICBM

Funkfingers said:

Older members of this forum will very probably have experienced daily driving in the *proper* Issigonis BMC/Leyland Mini. In the event of a frontal collision, the crumple zone was YOUR KNEES.

Not daily, but I've been in one - can't say I was very enthusiastic about that, or the extremely low seating position which means you're looking *up* at the wheel of a passing bus... although an MG Midget is equally scary from that point of view and has even worse visibility.

I certainly remember when Volvo drivers were considered the BMW Audi drivers of the time too...

adamm82

Legionreturns said:

Not so great for the people that bought diesels when the government loved them mind. 

I'm very confused. Islington want to charge me an extra £6.60 or something to park my diesel car.
yet my car tax is £20 a year. 

GoldenEraGuitars

I love my Passat sport TDI. I’d do my damnedest not to look at a Petrol car again tbh. 

Fortheloveofguitar

I do 600 miles a week and switching to petrol would be the end of me. No way my clients would pay the increase in price I’d have to hike up to cover extra fuel costs 

fandango

I have a problem where the situation leads to confusion between 'road safety' and 'environmental issues'.

Just because a car produces a little more visible smoke from the exhaust doesn't mean the car isn't safe to drive. Such a car could be far safer than a new car with barely legal tyres, worn brake discs, poor wheel alignment, yet a perfect well maintained engine.

That the MOT was saddled with emissions hasn't done the MOT any credibility favours. But if the emissions test was replaced with a proper means of determining the condition of the engine, that would be better, since an MOT would mean something to the next buyer of the car, rather than as a social engineering method of weeding out undesirable vehicles.

But who ever heard of an MOT failure on a public transport bus/coach with over a million miles on the clock? Worst belchers of the lot.

Wolfetone

Bucket said:

Garthy said:

Good, i’m fed up of following rolling smoke machines.

Indeed.

Some of the diesels I've followed on the road recently (even relatively new ones) have been belching out so much black smoke it makes me wonder how they could possibly be legal emissions-wise.

The boy racers remove the catalytic converter. There's a few round my way that put a shocking amount of black smoke. Normally the belching fug is accompanied by a very audible turbo whine.

Wolfetone

lonestar said:

I love my Passat sport TDI. I’d do my damnedest not to look at a Petrol car again tbh. 

I absolutely love my diesel. I'm also not convinced that they're as dirty as people claim. 

Sporky

Wolfetone said:

lonestar said:

I love my Passat sport TDI. I’d do my damnedest not to look at a Petrol car again tbh. 

I absolutely love my diesel. I'm also not convinced that they're as dirty as people claim. 

They aren't, but the hysterical hand-wringing brigade has successfully convinced too many people that they are, while ignoring that petrol engines and power stations don't just output butterfly farts and happiness. They'll be all outraged when the government turns on petrol next.

My next car will probably be petrol, but to compensate it'll probably be at least a V6 with a rotting cabbage hanging off the back bumper.

VimFuego

I have to be honest here and say we ditched diesel in favour of petrol, almost entirely for tax reasons (we do such low mileage that fuel consumption doesn't matter much) but I still prefer diesel. Petrol seems much harder work, at least round here. The roads are so twisty and hilly that you're constantly having to change up and down gears, with my diesel it would just pull and pull. I'd go back to diesel in a heartbeat if the tax costs were evened out a bit.

Bucket

Fortheloveofguitar said:

I do 600 miles a week and switching to petrol would be the end of me. No way my clients would pay the increase in price I’d have to hike up to cover extra fuel costs 

This is the thing - I'm not denying diesel is the best option for people like you who do loads of miles. I'm not one of those people, and actually, so many people who drive diesels aren't. Especially in cities, where diesel cars contribute hugely to pollution while not really delivering on any of the benefits people usually buy diesels for. The majority of diesels (even Sporky can't argue with this) are substantially worse than petrols in terms of particulate emissions and harmful greenhouse gases other than CO2. Yes, they're a bit better on CO2 than most petrols, and get better fuel economy while they're at it, but they're so much less eco-friendly in other ways.

Newer diesels are usually not bad, but I'd wager the majority of diesel cars on the roads are older, and therefore significantly dirtier than a petrol car the same age.

Sporky

Bucket said:

The majority of diesels (even Sporky can't argue with this) are orders of magnitude worse than petrols in terms of particulate emissions and harmful greenhouse gases other than CO2.

Are you really claiming that diesels are at least 100/1,000/10,000 times more polluting? 

If so then you're definitely in the hysterical camp. Or do you not mean "orders of magnitude" in the defined sense?

randella

Sporky said:

Bucket said:

The majority of diesels (even Sporky can't argue with this) are orders of magnitude worse than petrols in terms of particulate emissions and harmful greenhouse gases other than CO2.

Are you really claiming that diesels are at least 100/1,000/10,000 times more polluting? 

If so then you're definitely in the hysterical camp. Or do you not mean "orders of magnitude" in the defined sense?

@Sporky - don't rock the boat too hard fella, it's this camp that's just helped me snag a nine-month-old Peugeot 308 GT Line 2.0 BlueHDi with 8,000 miles on it from a main dealer. 

For a shade over half its original list price.

Sporky

randella said:

@Sporky - don't rock the boat too hard fella, it's this camp that's just helped me snag a nine-month-old Peugeot 308 GT Line 2.0 BlueHDi with 8,000 miles on it from a main dealer. 

For a shade over half its original list price.

Sorry!

It just irks me when people come up with these insane, unjustifiable claims just so they can earn smug-points on the inferweb, while they're still burning a slightly different sort of dinosaur-gravy in their cars and pretending nothing bad comes out of their exhausts.

Utter hypocrisy.