Due to a few wires getting crossed in my brain, my tin top is a few days out of MOT. As soon as I realised I got booked in the same day, but predictably the car failed.

The fail was expected and I know what work I have to do. The problem is that I need to get the car to my workshop which is conveniently located about 150 miles away. D'oh.

So I'm contemplating an illegal drive under the cover of darkness at the weekend. To help evaluate the risk, I want to know what'll happen if I get pulled.

I know that driving a car without MOT invalidates your insurance, and that driving without insurance can get you 6 points on your licence - but that would seem excessive for being a few days out of MOT.

Any personal experiences out there?

quote:

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Originally posted by AdamR
I know that driving a car without MOT invalidates your insurance, and that driving without insurance can get you 6 points on your licence - but that would seem excessive for being a few days out of MOT.

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You can drive to and from a test centre without an MOT if its booked in and I am sure you can do the same to get work done on the car.

Carl

I wouldnt worry about it. Drive sensibly and hope no one hits u.

I once wrote my car off (not my fault) and had no MOT (my fault), the insurance company basically made me pay another £100 on top of my excess due to having an expired MOT and still paid out in full.

As said before, just drive sensibly

can you not book an MOT somewhere close to your workshop? make sure you give the registration details.

If you're worrried about the distance (and its taking the p*ss) book about 10 mots along the route.

bear in mind that depending on the fail, its technically not roadworthy so the poilce might be rather unhappy with this. Can you not just pay a local garage to fix it? Surely thats got to be worth the hassle / time / cost of driving 150 miles, fixing the car and driving back.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Obviously I'm assuming that I wont have an accident en route. If that happened then I'd be in trouble, I know that. Hopefully my luck isn't THAT bad.

Mike, I like the idea of booking a string of MOTs along the route. You're right to question the economics of this plan, but my car is quite rare these days and I dread to think how much a garage would charge to locate the parts and do the work. Also the locost is back at my workshop so I'll get to spend a much-needed day of head scratching on that.

According to this site I'm allowed to drive an MOT-failed car to a garage for repair work. I can't find anything on the web that says it can't be my own garage, or that the garage I choose has to be within a certain distance.

Also, it says that the penalty for being caught without an MOT is a discretionary fine (up to £1000 ) - no points involved.

Think I'll risk it.

interesting that an MOT is treated so seriously - in reality it means nowt - all it shows is that at the time of the test, tester foudn the itmes he/she tested were yup to scratch.

Whos is to say that a) he/she was competent, b) tested the stuff that he/she said they did and c) stuff did not break the moment you left the garage?

Can you get a mate to drive it, and if someting goes wrong, say it was stolen and most of all, deny everything!

What was the nature of the failure? If it was something relatively minor (e.g. outside the emission limits) then maybe driving it home is excusable (though still technically illegal). However, if it failed due to something important such as slack steering, bad/leaky brakes or damaged tyres then there's no way it should be driven anywhere other than a nearby garage (if at all). Certainly not 150 miles...

Mr Wet Blanket
(aka David)

The Police nor the CPS bother to prosecute you unless its more than 28 days out of date but dont tell anyone
Steve.

I had an accident a few years back, got given a producer and then found when I got home that the MOT was a few days out of date. Took the other docs to the police, explained that I'd overlooked the MOT as I thought it ran out with the tax in a few weeks time (truth), and never heard anything more.

Whether not having an MOT invalidates your insurance is contentious. Not an expert by any means but I don't think they can wriggle out of their third party cover obligation. Also I don't think I've ever read that explicitly in a policy document, although I may be wrong - I think they do say something about the vehicle being roadworthy though.

Matt.

[Edited on 9/8/06 by matt_claydon]

Yep- fine only for MOT and I've never seen one for more than £200 in my 8 years working at Court.

Pat...

quote:

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Originally posted by David Jenkins
What was the nature of the failure? If it was something relatively minor (e.g. outside the emission limits) then maybe driving it home is excusable (though still technically illegal). However, if it failed due to something important such as slack steering, bad/leaky brakes or damaged tyres then there's no way it should be driven anywhere other than a nearby garage (if at all). Certainly not 150 miles...

Mr Wet Blanket
(aka David)

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quote:

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Originally posted by AdamR
If I considered it dangerous then I wouldn't consider driving it. I'm just interested in the legalities.

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Just be careful....

<cautionary tale>...

A few years back I had a VW Scirocco, The gearbox went and I spent a whole weekend replacing it. come Sunday night I decided I deserved a break after all that work so I drove to the CInema in town (about 10 miles back then). I decided to risk it even though the car was out of MOT and was booked in for the next morning. Sure enough I slid on something nasty on a roundabout and ripped the front corner suspension off! No MOT so the insurance wouldn't pay out and car was a right-off

<happy ending> I managed to bluff the Insurance company that I had lost the certificate and didn't know where the MOT was carried out- they knocked £200 off the ettlement figure

quote:

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Originally posted by DaveFJ
<happy ending> I managed to bluff the Insurance company that I had lost the certificate and didn't know where the MOT was carried out- they knocked £200 off the ettlement figure

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sadly true...

is it just tools you need from your workshop adam? are you still in/near guildford? drop me a u2u if i can be of assistance, i'm sure between us James and I have most tools you'd need if it'd save you travelling...

is it the celica that needs the work doing? is it a gt or gt4?

Ned.

[Edited on 9/8/06 by ned]

quote:

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Originally posted by matt_claydon
A tactic that unfortunately wouldn't work any more as MOT records are now kept on a national database.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ned
is it just tools you need from your workshop adam? are you still in/near guildford? drop me a u2u if i can be of assistance, i'm sure between us James and I have most tools you'd need if it'd save you travelling...

is it the celica that needs the work doing? is it a gt or gt4?

Ned.

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quote:

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Originally posted by David Jenkins
P.S. I'm not really trying to have a go at you - just urging some caution.
[Edited on 9/8/06 by David Jenkins]

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My understanding is that both the pre-booked MOT station and any pre-booked garage for repairs are supposed to be a 'reasonable' distance. 150 miles isn't, I suspect, counted as reasonable unless you live in the middle of the highlands of Scotland.

i seem to remember being told that mot should be at nearest mot place or within about 5 miles from home how true i cant be sure but a 150 mile drive wouldn,t be considered reasonable so would be carefull

i got a producer once for a car i was test driving, enthusiastically I was unable to produce the mot cos they guy had sold it by the time i produced, fortunately everything else was there. I got a letter from plod saying that they dont like to prosecute for minor breachs of the law to avoid alienating the public, and asking me to abide by the law in future.

If you ensure that the obvious fails are sorted (ie bulbs etc) and the prosecutable ones (tyres), id just drive as if nothing was the matter. I did 10k with no mot once

I was once told by a TC that they don't usually prosecute for having no MoT test but what they would do, if they thought it appropriate, was to impound the vehicle, have it inspected and charge you for each of the points it WOULD have failed the MoT on and also any other breaches of the road traffic act.
I looked into the driving to/from the MoT/home and couldn't find any referance to distance. Thats why I drove a freshly imported vehicle all the way from Southampton, back up to Whitby, for it's MoT. I got a cover note issued to the chassis number, 'phoned my friendly local garage and booked the MoT (and explained that I wouldn't actually be turning up for another few weeks!!) and off I went. I should have taken advantage of driving with no number plates but I drove reasonably sensible! I passed a few plod and a few passed me. They all had a good stare at both ends of the vehicle to see if it had any plates on but I was never stopped.

I got rammed in a car that was just out of MOT and I was driving home from the garage who would not keep the car until they got the parts to fix it. Plod turned up I got a producer and spent a week going to the nick every day with different bits of paper from the garage, MOT station, parts company you name it, basically they made my life hell all because a numpty ran in the back of me!

Caber