If your car is more than three years old, you’ll need to take an MOT test every year. This is to check that your car is in good enough condition to be on the road. The test itself checks for a variety of different potential faults or risks on your car. This could be testing the lights and indicators, or checking that the car is not more polluting than is acceptable.
Pass an MOT
If you fail your MOT, you’ll usually have the right to a free re-test after your mechanic has carried out the necessary repairs. If your car still fails its test, it won’t be legal to use it on the road. To avoid this situation, make sure that your car doesn’t fail on any of the most common reasons.
Lights
As many as 29.60% of cars that initially failed their MOT test failed because of lighting or signalling failures. Many of the problems that come under this category are easily fixed, or even prevented. Re-aligning headlights is easy for mechanics to do – and cheap to fix. Despite this, you can fail your MOT for not having properly aligned headlights.
Tyres
Equally easy to check before taking your test is the inflation and tread of your tyres. You can check your own tread depth using measuring tools. You can even, in a pinch, test whether your tyres are within minimum tread depths using a 20 pence piece. Your tyre inflation, too, only takes a few minutes to test. Even though these issues are easy to fix, around 10% of initial MOT failures are for these reasons.
Small Changes
When you have an MOT, you can take small steps yourself that will contribute towards making it more likely that you pass. Taking a short period of time before your MOT test could save you money in the long term, and make it less likely that your car will fail.
Caring for your Car
If you take the time to prepare for your MOT, you are probably the sort of person that likes to take care of their car. Taking care of your car can only take you so far – accidents still happen. If your car suffers a serious accident and is written off, you might not have been capable of taking any action to help in the first place. If your car is written off, you might not receive as much back from your insurer as you paid for the vehicle. GAP Insurance pays you the difference between your insurer pay out, and the amount that you paid for your vehicle in the first place.