Editorial: For all the current delays, Northern Ireland has a good MOT vehicle testing system

​The MOT system in Northern Ireland was under pressure even before the pandemic struck four years ago.​

Now, in the years after lockdown, it has never recovered. The wait for tests can be four months.

Not only did coronavirus knock the system out of kilter, but there are also problems such as the one we report today, cracks in testing centre lifts that have reappeared only four years after most of them were replaced.

With traffic levels back to pre-2020 norms, and a test backlog, the last thing the system needs is mechanical failure. Public anger could see the whole MOT process is overthrown if MLAs rush into a new method of vehicle testing such as the English one.

This would be a grave mistake. NI has an independent system of state-run tests in which vehicles are examined by experts who have no vested interest in passing or failing you. In Great Britain, private garages carry out the tests, which – despite supposed safeguards – can lead to a conflict of interest.

There, the first test is carried out after a new car reaches only three years, yet here it is not carried out until four years. Yet in 2011 the News Letter reported on how England had a higher rate of failure after three years than NI did after four. Three-year-old cars are usually in better shape than four-year-old ones, so the disparity suggests that the private system leads to testing garages telling people to carry out work they don’t need.

GB has considered pushing out the date of the first test to four years, like NI, but the government decided against. NI has considered biennial testing after four years, rather than annual.

This is a good idea, or at least scrapping the test after five years, so that cars are tested at four years, six years, and annually thereafter. Even taking out that single fifth year test would greatly alleviate test pressure, with minimal risks to safety, given how well built cars are today.