We all love good horror movies and it’s stories, and when it comes to MOT horrors they’re something we can use in our campaigning efforts. We need your pictures of MOT horrors and your stories of the state of some of the vehicles presented for MOT tests. Below, in this article, you can find the details about horror stories of MOT testing.
There were multiple reasons for the MOT exceptions to be put in place due to the Coronavirus. With the Government laying down rules in early April informing people to stay at home as much as possible, come of their houses only if they needed to, social distance, regularly sanitize, and avoid public places, many did not want to go through with the MOT test. Additionally, the pandemic reduced the number of jobs, leaving a lot of garages and offices understaffed, which meant tasks that usually took a few minutes, were now taking hours. The most important was that they wanted to make sure essential services like garages were open to essential service workers who needed them more than the rest. Simply put, temporary exemptions were supposed to enable vital services to continue, frontline workers to get to work, and people to get food & nutration and medicine during the outbreak.
Although there was a six-month exemption put in place for people registering their vehicles from the 30th of March to the 31st of July, people had to make sure their cars were roadworthy. While there were fines of up to £1000 for driving without an MOT registration, these fines doubled for people with cars that were not roadworthy, used around the UK. Additionally, garages for regular checks, as well as MOT garages were open during the pandemic since they were essential services. While this was the case, more than 1.3 million people went ahead and got their MOT registrations in June 2020.
There were specific reasons for people to leave their homes, marked in the Government
guidelines. Some garages were assisting people with the MOT registration process by sending their representative to houses to collect the vehicle. These people would take the car to their garage, get it tested for the MOT and then bring them back at the end of the day without the person having to leave their homes to handle this themselves.
To make the process easier, people could even book MOT online and would receive a date and time when they had to show up to the garage. These changes prevented a lot of people from waiting in long queues which were not ideal during a pandemic. Furthermore, the dates pushed forward were also causing backlogs that lead to more people wanting to get their vehicles MOT tested.
When the tests were updated at the beginning of 2018, almost 30% of all vehicles failed and had to be repaired before they could ply on the roads in the UK. Failing an MOT test meant that the vehicle had to be fixed before being driven and this is one of the reasons why it is recommended that people get their vehicle checked with a garage before applying for the MOT test. People can choose to have their garage book MOT on their behalf and visit the centre to get it done. However, people should handle the testing with an MOT centre that does not repair cars so that they do not have a biased opinion on any work done on the vehicle elsewhere.
