Taxi Driver Online

Makes no sense at all, unless the council test is inferior to the MOT test.

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IDFIMH

OK...

So the council get a MOT station to undertake all HC/PH tests and put that out to tender

lets say the winning bid is £25 per test against the usual MOT fee of £45

at my previous LA almost every car failed on something the test centre could "put right for £20" (bulbs, wipers or an out of tune carb needing a tweak, or bulb alignment)

almost without fail

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

But as i said before a council test is more stringent than a mot.Bodywork being the biggest nightmare,your likely to fail on the smallest of blemishes.

not here, the first part of the "age exemption" test (over 6 years old) is carried out not by a test centre, but by the LO (a visual examination) who then gives us the form to take to the test centre who do a MOT if the owner requests on or the compliance if no MOT is being done

this just highlights the regional differences in regs (and prices)

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

I know the MoT standard is the MINIMUM standard for a vehicle to be fit for the road; that includes PSVs and lorries. a lot of bus and lorry operators maintain to higher than MoT test standards to ensure road safety.

It therefore follows that the LO compliance test, call it what you will, should require a higher standard than the car MoT

Having just had my 8 year old Chrysler checked by my local garage as fit for service, the Lo tester was not happy that one rear indicator was showing a white light. It wasn't, but for the sake of £1 for a new bulb it wasn't worth arguing about.

Things like colour of bulbs and play on steering ball joints are not set down; it is to the testers' discretion. You can always download a copy of the car testers manual from the VOSA website.

Please put safety first.

as already said above a lot of drivers up here use the twice yearly test as a check on their vehicles, putting them in knowing they will fail so they can get a list of faults they Must fix rather than fixing everything that might be wrong with the car.


people like this are ruining our trade putting their own and the publics safety at risk by not performing routing maintenance and inspections.


I only wish our LA would bring back the surprise inspections rather than the poor effort that is the enforcement units roadside inspection(basically a quick shufty round the car make sure its clean the tyres have tread and the lights all work.

the problem is that the councils seem to think that hacks being purpose built are indestructible and throwing PH off as soon as it hits 7 years old means they don't have problems.

ive seen 2 yr old cars with sills damaged from incorrect jacking being rotten, I've also seen immaculate 10 yr old octavias that would put most under 3 yrs old to shame.


I also wish our LA would start cracking down on repeat failers, fair enough if you have a blown bulb or something that can go at anytime, but to be consistently presenting a car that is not fit for work an unsafe should see operators loose their plates.

Most common fails in this area where berlingos, followed by vectras as far as I knew of, nearly all of my sierras failed at one time or another, and in 2001 My brand new skoda Octavia 1.9 SDI failed its test for the rear seats being to narrow, tester was an a hole he had passed another few Octavias as at that time they where new to the trade, he knew I was a catholic and Celtic supporter and he was off the other mob, luckily he is nt there any more