Safe Speed Forums

There was an old article some years ago about EU trying to get UK to adopt two tearly tests .Found this whilst looking for something else.
Apologies if it's a repost .

Greening promises MOT rule review
http://www.rac.co.uk/news-advice/motori ... le-review/

edit -to add the origonal post
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=14323&p=135918&hilit=mot+changes#p135918

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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

Checking for all potential suspension damage from speed humps would be a good indicator of their apparent 'contribution to road safety'!
Making the MOT better concentrate on real safety issues than policy preferences would be very good.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Coul this be the start of a revolt on UK safety standards focusing on real issues rather than ones dreamp up by some Quango in the EU .

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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

Well let's hope that some common sense is on the cards, along with a genuine return to good road safety values based on facts, science and sound engineering !

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

This is on the government's public consultations website - closing date sometime in early January, I think, if you want to submit comments. Also in the proposals are suggestions that they could exempt classic cars from the annual MOT (they're proposing anything built before 1960). Personally, I think it should be a rolling 25 or 30 years (as should road tax)!

They already check suspension for MOT, but what they can check with the equipment they have is very limited.

They're also going to be checking (in a limited way) electronic stability control systems (BIG £££ if they go sick!) tyre pressure monitoring systems, and other "advanced safety features". Not sure how they will do that as yet, but probably just limited to checking the warning light! I'm sure someone will do a roaring trade on eBay selling little electronic modules that minic the operation of the warning light!

To be honest, I haven't got a big problem with the current MOT scheme. All the checks seem pretty sensible (by and large) and I've no doubt that they make a real contribution to road safety. Anyone who lived in Ireland 10 years or so ago (before they had MOTs) will know just how dangerous and neglected cars can get without one! Basically, if it "still goes" it's roadworthy!

I buy old bangers for use for work. Usually pay up to £500 for them with about 6 months MOT on them and expect them to last no more than two years. It's very unusual to take one for an MOT without finding that some suspension joint or other is worn enough to need changing.
I recently bought one off Ebay for £320 which had 6 months MOT but when I took it to a mates garage for a check on the ramps, it was in a lethal conditon with dodgy brake pipes, worn suspension etc and along with the fact that it needed a clutch etc (started slipping a week after buying it) it was cheaper to scrap and make a small loss than have the work done. Now just imagine that car in just under 18months time, in the hands of some novice driver who wouldn't appreciate its handing or other dangers...still got an MOT but how safe?
Now I've driven some right heaps over some dodgy roads and my experience lets me know when a car is handing badly and I can adjust my driving to "compensate" for it but in all honesty, some of the cars that I've owned, still with a valid MOT, I wouldn't lend to my worst enemy if i thought they were going on a long cross country jaunt in the winter.
Personally I believe that extending MOTs to 2 years will see a lot more deaths on country roads.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I agree on the 2-year thing. Like you, I tend not to spend much on my personal motoring. Despite being a real petrolhead and having quite an extensive "fantasy garage", the truth of the matter is that I probably won't ever drive (much less own!) anything worth more than £5k! If the car is well-mintained, the cost of an MOT isn't a great deal in the overall picture of running a car. If it isn't, well, perhaps it shouldn't be on the road anyway?! Basically, that's the MOT doing its job.

Not so sure about experienced drivers being able to tell (or not) when something is amiss though. That used to be possible but nowadays cars are so much more complex, and so good at masking faults when they arise, that even the most skilful driver won't have a clue if (say) his electronic stability control has gone sick (until he stands on the brakes one day and ends up chasing his tailpipe through a hedge)!

Only yesterday I passed some muppet quite happily cruising down the M74 with one rear tyre so soft that the rim was almost touching the sidewall! I can't believe that ANYONE (experienced or not) couldn't have noticed that somethign wasn't right!

E.S.C?, what's one of those? .. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never owned car with one on and now that one's been scrapped...

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Yep I think a soft tyre is most novice drivers introduction to dodgy handling, although I used to find that in the old days of higher profile tyres, it was far easier to notice a soft tyre than in todays low profile setups...especially something like a 40% profile.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

OR over inflated .Try a RWD van with rears over inflated - we took one to a well known tyre place for new rears .Next day ,I took one van and our novice took other .On the way back I ened up with his ,as he had no faith in it's handling .I went straight to tyre place ,where manager found ,as suspected that rears were 10% over .

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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

Again, I think it was something more noticeable on higher profile tyres. I remember driving with 40PSI in rear tyres once (faulty guage) and noticing how "bouncy" the car was, I've also had a low pressure tyre on opposite corners of the car before now and that gives you the impression that a shock absorber has gone but my MR2 has 40 profiles and even when one tyre was as low as 20PSI (normally run them at 30PSI front and 35PSI rear), you still wouldn't really notice it through driving it. I've driven cars with broken springs and shocks in my time.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

This one was on pretty ordinary (I'd guess 60 profile) tyres and was visibly lower on that corner. I reckon there was 10PSI (or les) in it though. It was WELL soft!

UPDATE -saw an article in a motoring mag in a supermart ,yesterday - UK has decided not to give way to changing the MOT periodicity -it stays at one year . HORAY for common sense.

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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

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

If the change is mandated by the EU then the UK has to comply. It matters not what our government wants.
Also of interest: In the changes (which came from the EU) remapping of the ECU is a fail, so from that we can assume some sort of test equipment need.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

It will be interesting to see how they check for remapped ECUs. Even a lot of manufacturer's diagnostic equipment can't tell if an ECU has been hacked.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Who knows.
One motoring journo reckons the fail rate could be as high as 70%.
All the dash warnings have to work, loud exhausts are a fail, any trailer sockets have to not only work but meet the standard for sockets.
The mot cost could rise to over £100 this year, AND it will take more time than the allocated 45 minutes.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

I don’t think you can beat an annual test by a true professional mechanic; as distinguished from a bloke calling himself a mechanic because he owns a set of spanners. I regard myself as quite ‘on the ball’ when it comes to mechanics, yet I still got caught out the one year when the mechanic said “look at your clutch fluid”. After telling him I do all my own maintenance I was embarrassed not to have noticed it was quite black from contaminants leaching into the fluid over time. Not dangerous, as such, but an oversight on my part nonetheless.

The worst car condition I ever saw was when I was in Tijuana when we drove down from California for the day and got a taxi to a place we were trying to find. But for the good weather they enjoy there it would have been a complete write-off a decade or more ago, with a body like a string vest. As it was, there was just enough left to hold the thing together.

The list of bad things was huge: no working seat belts and an engine noise reminiscent of when I once heard what happens when a big end goes, complete with a James Bond's Aston Martin smoke screen on full tilt. I always remember it looked like he had to turn the steering wheel half a turn before the wheels recognised what to do!

If you leave car maintenance to unprofessional owners on a tight budget it will inevitably lead to very dodgy vehicles...

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I prefer to see their credentials in writing - where the title "ENGINEER" is NOT their firsrt name .

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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