Safe Speed Forums

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7110487.stm

Recalled vehicles 'go untraced'

About 1.3m vehicles were recalled last year, Vosa said Manufacturers failed to trace more than 100,000 potentially defective vehicles last year, government figures reveal. The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa) said one in 12 vehicles called back after manufacturers found safety concerns had failed to turn up.

Recalls have followed worries over brakes, steering and seatbelt systems. Vosa, which enforces vehicle recalls, said it was making progress on raising success rates, but the RAC Foundation said: "Lives could be at risk."

Making progress

Recalls are issued when a manufacturer discovers a problem which was not apparent when the vehicle was released into showrooms. The DVLA database is used to track down owners - but difficulties arise when this is incomplete, such as when an individual has moved house but not told the DVLA their new address. Some of these vehicles do carry serious faults. Edmund King, RAC Foundation

According to Vosa, there were 1.3m recalls last year and the recall rate was about 92%. That left about 108,000 vehicles which were unaccounted for when Vosa considered all had been done to trace an owner. RAC Foundation's executive director Edmund King said it was a worry that vehicles with potentially serious faults were on the roads. He added: "Some of these vehicles do carry serious faults.

"If a motorist doesn't get that warning, if they don't take their car into an authorised dealer, it's very unlikely that those faults will be picked up."

But Jeff Sweeting, Vosa's head of vehicle safety, said the agency was making progress to improve the success rate. He said: "Ideally for any safety recall we would wish to have a 100% success rate, but we have been working very closely with the trade associations.

"Those that are left out there unattended to are of concern to us, but we often know that some may be written off, some may be stolen or scrapped or exported." He added that the agency was not aware of any accidents caused by faulty cars that should have been recalled.

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Are you insured if you hit someone, if you haven't sent your recalled car back to the dealer?

Moreover, if you kill someone with a "dodgy" car...Would that be classed as "premeditated" in a court of law...ie. you knew you should have sent it back to the dealer, but you "couldn't be arsed" to..

Is this the same as in
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16508

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

To be fair here, I suppose it takes time to get a system up and running and it will NEVER be "current".

I have a second car SORNED. Just recently I thought.......is that due? I couldn't remember, and all I could find was a 12 month out out date (2006) SORN document.

I went on their site, entered in the details.........and it confirmed that it isn't due until May 2008!

So........they don't ALWAYS get it wrong........

A bit of a bugger if you have an MG or Rover car....Manufacturer does not exist any more...

At the time Rover went bust VOSA said they didn't know what they could do in the event of safety recalls.

I remember a long time ago I had a safety recall on a 10 year old Chevette. The head light glass had a habit of falling out according to the notice. The solution was for the dealer to put ugly great clips on the light. I didn't bother taking mine in.

By the way I HATE the term "Lives could be at risk." Its used as a exclamation mark in a lot of motoring related stories.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Surely a case for feeding the details into the ANPR database -pull the vehicle and inform the driver that the vehicle was the subject of a recall.But then that's putting the technology to good use - no profit in that ,is there ??

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

On the other hand, they could just pull the driver over, ask if the recall had been initiated, and when told no, pull the driver for driving an unsafe vehicle.

Or: http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosa/apps/recalls/default.asp

Oh, and the details are already there. They just need a bit of "joining-up" to do. Then the recalls (which are notified to VOSA) can be included in the information available to the MOT tester at the next test (as is the previous mileage and info from previous passes/failures (notifications)). The tester will see that the recall was announced, the vehicle tested had not been seen, so a failure will be issued. It is worth pointing out that no matter what amount of time is remaining on the previous mot test, a failure cancels the existing mot.

But then again -what information is recorded in the vehicle manuals for a driver to see?
My present car has been the subject of two recalls (I know because of a web site) which have been carried out (phoned the manufacturer) ,but no record of this is recorded in the service schedule or any other place for that matter.So if a MOT depended on my proving this ---I'd be in the mud--probably like a lot of motorists.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Doesn't exactly fill me with confidence!

This is a direct "Copy and paste" of VOSA advice concerning a Toyota Landcruiser (which I checked out of personal curiosity)



Now I accept that my spelling/grammer is none too good at times. But I'm not the public face of a first_world government agency!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"