MOT failure data: ICO backs BBC request
Would you like to know which makes of car most often fail MOT tests?
Until now, the government agency involved has insisted that this data should be kept secret on commercial grounds. But in a case brought by the BBC the information commissioner has ruled that it should be revealed.
This stems from an FOI request made last July by my colleague Nicola Beckford to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA), the Department for Transport agency which supervises the MOT testing scheme.
She asked for a breakdown by manufacturer and model of car of the number of MOT passes and failures and the reasons for failing.
VOSA refused to release the information on the basis that doing so could damage the commercial interests of vehicle manufacturers. It insisted that publishing the data would be against the public interest.
After Nicola complained to the information commissioner's office, VOSA presented the ICO with the following arguments against disclosure:
"The release of information relating to specific make and model would be likely to be commercially damaging to vehicle manufacturers whose failure rates appear higher, and therefore less favourable, than other manufacturers...this information would be likely to be used by some manufacturers to gain a competitive advantage, for example by publicising that their failure rate is lower than another manufacturer's failure rate for a comparable vehicle model."
It added that MOT failure could be due to the owner not maintaining the vehicle properly rather than its manufacturing quality, and therefore:
"[P]ublication of the requested information risked misleading the public as it could lead to the misconception that one manufacturer produces a lower quality of vehicles than another manufacturer when failure rates are compared."
The commissioner has dismissed this case, arguing that VOSA had not provided any evidence from car manufacturers themselves that they felt their commercial interests would be harmed by releasing the data.
He therefore upheld the BBC's complaint and has instructed VOSA to supply the material. The text of the decision is not yet on the ICO website but should be there within a few days. It is not yet known whether VOSA will now comply or will appeal against the commissioner's ruling.
UPDATE, 14:41: VOSA has now told me:
"We are currently considering the ICO's comments but have not yet decided whether or not we will be appealing against the Decision Notice. We have until 31 December to decide whether or not to lodge an appeal."
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~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~54~RS~)
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I'm afraid I agree with VOSA on this one. Data like this will only show which cars are regularly serviced or cared for, which cars typically have owners that don't leave problems until the MOT to sort out.
My previous car I cared for far more than my current (family) car and, as such, it never failed an MOT whereas my current car always needs something doing as it's not regularly serviced, it's not that the car goes wrong any more than my old one.
I'm sure we won't be surprised not to see Jaguar, Aston Martin or Rolls Royce at the top of the table but that's no guarantee at all that they don't go wrong just as much. It will only serve as an unjust black mark on manufacturers that happen to make cars that boy racers like.
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I'd disagree with one part of post #1. Generally I've found that 'boy racers' love their cars more than life itself and lavish love and attention on them. These old Corsas & Peaugeots they often buy up have more new parts than original by the time the owner has 'modified' them. As a driver I get far more problems from middle age men driving Audi's and BMW's than from 17 year olds in 'hot hatches'
That apart unless the database showing which cars fail their MOT's contain a truly amazing amount of information it will be meaningless. I've had cars 'fail' MOT's because I fitted a replacement headlight bulb upside down (I didn't even know they had an upside down!) so in that case the failure was 100% driver error not the fault of Vauxhall.
Many causes of MOT failure are down to worn out parts (tyres, lights , brake pads etc). How quickly a part wears out depends a lot on the annual mileage of a car. 'Sales Rep' type cars such as Vectras, Audi A4's, Mondeos generally do far more miles than 'second' cars like Vauxhall corsas which may only be driven to the shops and back twice a week. Its a variation on the statistics that say 'women are safer drivers than men' which isn't true if calculated as accidents per mile driven.
Personally I find things like the 'Top Gear Top Car' poll where owners of specific cars report their problems or 'Which' reviews more use than this proposal.
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Peter_Sym says "How quickly a part wears out depends a lot on the annual mileage of a car". Well, yes and no. A car that does 30,000 miles a year on motorways is likely to need its brake pads changing less frequently than a car that does 10,000 miles a year in towns. Even the former's suspension will wear slower than the latter's.
But I digress. This data will reveal little about car manufacturer reliability and more about third party components. For example, Renault doesn't make the light bulbs, tyres and seatbelts that go into its cars - yet these are common causes of MoT failures. I don't see how the data can be used to point the finger at car makers. If it is, I imagine it won't be long before the lawyers get in touch with the BBC.
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This is typical example of manufacturers thinking their rights to sell dodgy product to oblivious consumers is more important that consumers rights to know what they are buying. The argument that MOT failures are due to the owners rather that the vehicles is a sad diversionary tactic. Certain problems like worn tyres will be due to the owners but others like misaligned headlights or rust in certain areas will be due to design flaws. Making public not only the basic information of which models fail more often but the important details of why they failed will ensure that consumers will be able to see which failures are due to the owners and which are due to inherent problems with the model itself. It is imperative that this information is made public not only so that consumers can make better informed choices but so the manufacturers are forced by commercial pressures to improve their products.
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This is terrible. If you are aware which cars are likely to go wrong and where, the owner/driver could keep a special watch for it and always have that bit checked at a service, even if it was not part of the scheduled service.
The MOT is a Safety Check, - a check to improve road safety. The MOT only means that the car is safe on the day it takes and passes the test. The next 364 days before the next one could easily see a part fail and become illegal and you wouldn't know until an accident.
By covering up this data, the VOSA are helping make our roads worse.
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#3 a fair point but it further highlights how confusing this would be. Likewise Renault may not personally manufacture the light bulbs, tyres etc but it does choose them and supply them with the car so in itself thats not an excuse to exlude them.... however the driver DOES choose (and even fit) replacements that may not be the same quality as the original and that certainly isn't the manufacturers fault.
Further statistical problems would come from the amount of a specific car on the road. How many Bugatti Veyrons are in the UK? 1 or 2. If one of those fails its MOT then it'll look like 50% of Bugattis are MOT failures. Certain top end cars (Ferrari's especially) have very short service periods and the owner doesn't religiously follow them he'll be in trouble. This isn't really the manufacturers fault.
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It's easy to see if a part is a user-replacable one (e.g. headlight bulb), so that could be effectively discounted from the data. I would be more interested in seeing any trends that develop, for example suspension spring failures, for any given make/model/year.
Fathertedrules suggests that Renault do not make the seatbelts that go in their vehicles, however the VOSA data would show if there were consistant failures around a certain build-date. This would give the prospective buyer extra saftey information about that vehicle. That cannot be a bad thing, can it?
Bulbs and tyres being the cause of failures is fairly and sqaurely down to the driver of the vehicle. Tyres have "replace now" banding on them, worn brakes usually will illuminate a warning on the instrument panel, and the bulbs are designed to be easy to replace. (Matthew Jones take note: those cars you see driving along with one light dazzling people without their main-beam on, are those who put the bulbs in wrongly, which results in the bulb not sitting in the correct position in the reflector, which in turn gives the wrong distribution of light.) I agree that the driver's inability to follow the instructions does not reflect on the manufacturer.
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#4. I misaligned my own headlight by badly replacing a blown bulb. Likewise hit the kerb at speed a few times and you'll misalign your wheels quite easily.
There are several benchmark tests (such as Euro NCAP crash tests) which are scientific comparisions of which makes of car are safest. I've no problem in principle with this idea but in practice you will need a hell of a set of reporting criteria and then be dependent on the accuracy of the garage doing the MOT test (having dealt with several private garages I'd trust the average mechanic about as far as I could throw him)
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I'm not sure that this information will help the general public, even though it may be interesting to car fanatics. What Car? run a reliability survey based on claims made on aftermarket warranties, which is probably the most accurate reliability information that we are ever going to get. I believe that the government should release some form of results to influence car buying and ensure that manufacturers do their best to provide the best build quality, but failed MOT results wouldn't give us an accurate picture.
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Why bother making a FOI request? Just note which cars are (and aren't) driven by the guys at VOSA?
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Following on.....
VOSA's arguments are exceptionally flawed:
"...for example by publicising that their failure rate is lower than another manufacturer's failure rate for a comparable vehicle model."
Don't manufacturers use the "official government figures" when publicising the vehicles fuel economy? Don't the government allow free and unfettered access to these figures?
and
"[P]ublication of the requested information risked misleading the public as it could lead to the misconception that one manufacturer produces a lower quality of vehicles than another manufacturer when failure rates are compared."
If a particular model is consistantly failing in a particular way, then it's not a mis-conception of lower quality, it's a fact, and one the manufacturers should note, especially in the arena of safety.
From what I remember, in this instance, the government have no bias in recording this matter, and would record the results for every single UK-registered car on the road in the UK today. Efforts such as What Car are limited to the readers who take part. WHat Car is also subject to "editorial review", so certain results can be "forgotten". A survey of 25,000 cars is not representative of the 100,000s that are on the roads today. I don't read What Car, so the cars I use are not part of their survey.
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Data is collected all around us, dna, video footage, internet cookies.
For once i would like information to be available and not have to fight for it.
Everyone knows certain cars have dodgy reputation, but if it was backed up by hard evidence then it is good for joe blogg and bad for car firms for making inferior products regardless whether it is cheap car or a luxury car.
Like the mp's expense's scandal, govnerment and secrets go hand in hand and they forget they work for us not the other way round.
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#12. 'Everyone knows' a lot of things.... most of them are complete nonsense. After all 'everyone knows' that all these EU immigrants come here to cash in our benefits.... the fact that they have to work for 24 months continually to claim anything all is is usually ignored. The problem is that if BBC Blogs and HYS is any judge of the great british public any fact that doesn't meet our preconceptions is a 'whitewash' or 'nu-labour spin'
I'd bet next weeks pay that Skoda (which used to be a complete joke) have fewer MOT failures than most other makes. If you want hard evidence about the quality of a car look at the Top Gear website and their owners poll, Autocar's similar polls or "Which" reviews. Personally I'd check the EURO-NCAP crash data first. All are far more useful than seeing which cars fail (normally on very minor faults) after 3+ years of inadequate services.
Incidentally if the govt is meant to provide this data it means we pay for it. Given the average cost & efficency of every other goverment IT scheme do you REALLY want this bill added to your MOT fee? I sure as hell don't.
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Whilst access to the data would be of use in the right hands, I'm afraid that today's media (and all too frequently the members of the Great British public too) either don't have the skills to filter the statistics to give meaningful facts, or they choose not to do so in the pursuit of sensational stories. The saying lies, damn lies and statistics will undoubtedly apply. In the wrong hands someone could make the statistics say virtually anything. For example at one time it was said that an incredible 75% of the Land Rovers ever made were still on the road. But older cars will likely fail more MOTs. So does that mean Land Rovers are poorer quality than another make which perhaps has only half the working life? The bland statistics would say that, but it's not a true picture. I believe if opened to all it will simply result in confusion and contradiction. VOSA haven't made the best fist of explaining their opposition.
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#13 "If you want hard evidence about the quality of a car look at the Top Gear website and their owners poll"
The JD Powers surveys typified by Top Gear are flawed too. Firstly they rely on a self selecting set of drivers to complete the survey. This means that the distinctly happy and unhappy are over represented, thus skewing the results. Also the survey is somewhat subjective in that it measures how happy people are with their cars, their dealers etc. So it's not an absolute measure of quality. Skoda has consistently been in the top ten in the JD Powers survey over the years, but do Skoda owners have different expectations than Mercedes owners for example? Is a Skoda of higher quality than a Mercedes?
As mentioed by someone earlier data from extended warrantee providers and fleet managers are a better indication of "quality".
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VOSA seem to think the data is theirs to withold or publish as they see fit, it isn't.
VOSA is owned by the government and we pay for the government, each time a car is MOT'd that data should be publicly available.
It is not about manufacturers interests or any other factor.
It is about who pays for the data and that would be us.
Just publish the lot on the VOSA website in both on-line query form and as a dataset once per year.
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Yes, the info may be misleading and difficult to interpret, but it can open up a very productive and informative debate.
Several years ago, quite by accident and thanks only to the peculiarities of an internet search engine, I came across official data giving death rates per passenger mile in Europe and the USA by model and manufacturer. I was very suprised that the safest car in both continents wasn't a Volvo or Saab, but a Jaguar XJ.
The lesson is that real life data can at least cause us to question the perceptions we gain from advertising and what everyone says!
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How surprising that the new ex-BBC Information Commissioner (IC) has backed the BBC, whilst throwing out every complaint against a BBC refusal to disclose information.
Have you seen a recent decision of the IC in respect of a request to the BBC? See
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/decisionnotices/2009/fs_50275712.pdf
In a nutshell, the IC is satisfied that details of paternity/maternity pay that the BBC has paid out is held for the purposes of "journalism, art or literature". Utter shame-faced nonsense that makes a mockery of the FOI Act.
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"Just publish the lot on the VOSA website in both on-line query form and as a dataset once per year."
But the figures don't even look right. Picking a random vehicle (the Toyota Yaris), and ignoring Test failures because we don't know if one car failing twice counts twice, Cars passed in 2004=30,428. In 2005 they recorded 740. The next year 6.
Perhaps more effort is required to get the figures right first before anybody relies on them.
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The VOSA figures are in a slightly more useful format - searchable - at http://www.motdatabase.co.uk although as Andy mentioned above there's a fair few dodgy figures! No doubt they will be updated at some point soon though.
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There is lots of whinging about fleet cars like Vauxhall Vectra's/ Astra's, Peugeot 307/407's, Ford Mondeo's being harder used...
However, they completely miss the point that fleet vehicles are very regularly serviced, and commonly are manufacturer franchise dealer serviced.
Whilst higher mileage than a runabout, they should still be in good working order...lease companies normally don;t run cars past 120,000 miles. Not a huge amount, esp. for a modern diesel.
Unless
- Franchised dealers (servicing depts) are rubbish
- Lease companies cut corners on servicing/maintenance.
As en ex-company car driver, I know both of the above are 100% true.
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This information/data is flawed as it disregards a number of important issues. These being: Driving style (including the driver consistently hitting / bumping curbs, Mileage driven, Service records (test the car and fix any problem - rather than a planned maintenance scheme), Vehicle Damage caused by the poor road conditions that we are expected to put up with, have you seen the number of pot holes in Buckinghamshire’s roads (even pot holes have pot hole in them) this coupled with the less than adequate repair techniques used in the repairs when they are made. All these things will amount to vehicles having an MOT refused NOT to the quality of the manufactured vehicle and normal wear and tear
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The VOSA data only confirms what we expected i.e. that, surprise, surprise, those vehicles which are likely to be owned either by motoring enthusiasts or by those who can afford to have them frequently maintained to the highest standard, are also those that have a higher MOT pass rate. It's right that such data should be in the public domain, but perhaps it should be accompanied by a "health warning", pointing out the obvious flaw for those who cannot identify it for themselves.
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