Making Warrants of Fitness tests harder to pass has simply increased the number of vehicles driving illegally, says the car review website dogandlemon.com.
Editor Clive Matthew-Wilson, who is an outspoken road safety campaigner, was commenting after a news report disclosed that nearly half of WOF or registrations are overdue.
“Without a registration, you can't legally drive to get a WoF. Without a WoF, you can't get a registration. Within 12 months, your vehicle will simply drop out of the system."
That’s why hundreds of thousands of vehicles are now driving illegally.”
Matthew-Wilson says:
“In recent years, the WOF test appears to have been deliberately tightened to fail older vehicles, whether they are safe or not.”
“For example, vehicles are now often failed for rust in the front mudguards, even though this rust generally has no effect on safety.[1]”
Former motor mechanic Hagen Robertson tells of having his car failed for a ‘twisted seatbelt’.
“I literally just turned the seatbelt over, and it was no longer twisted. This is the sort of nonsense that I often have to put up with these days in order to pass a WoF. ”
Robertson, who now works as a geologist in Northland, sees dozens of vehicles without WoFs or registration every day.
“Every school or supermarket carpark has dozens of vehicles that have simply left the system.”
“Previously the problem was often dodgy garages passing unsafe vehicles. [2].Now it’s often the other way around.”
“The WoF system used to be about safety, with inspections carried out by technicians who had real experience with cars and trucks. Now the WoF check is mainly concerned with lots and lots of rules, administered by 'inspectors' who often have zero understanding of how cars actually work.”
Matthew-Wilson says there’s a genuine concern from environmentalists about the pollution produced by older vehicles.
However, Iain McGlinchy, who spent 17 years as a policy advisor at the Ministry of Transport, says older cars are not necessarily worse for the planet.
According to the government’s Right Car website, the emissions from a 2001 Honda Civic are actually 8% lower than the 2021 model.
Matthew-Wilson says there is no question that newer cars are safer. However, he says, many newer and safer cars, especially cars from Europe, are both unreliable and expensive to repair.
“Poor people often choose the most reliable car they can afford. For example, a twenty-year-old Toyota is likely to be vastly more reliable than a ten-year-old Fiat.”
“If you have to choose between paying the mortgage or paying for WoF repairs, you’re likely to pay the mortgage, even though this means you end up driving illegally.”
Matthew-Wilson emphasises he strongly supports the WoF system, but there needs to be a balance.
“Often, the problem is not the regulations, but the way they’re being enforced. Garages are terrified of losing their licences to issue WoFs. There are few penalties for a WoF inspector who is tougher than they need to be, but heavy penalties for WoF inspectors who pass unsafe vehicles. Therefore WoF inspectors tend to take the easy choice and fail vehicles, whether they’re unsafe or not.”
“It would be far smarter to have a more sensible WoF check that encouraged owners to keep their vehicles legal.”
Matthew-Wilson predicts the government’s new Road User Charges system “is going to be a shambles.”
“There are already hundreds of thousands of vehicles that have simply dropped out of the system. How is the government going to track these vehicles electronically if they are not registered?”
“And what is going to happen when the police turn up in poor areas and start seizing thousands of unwarranted and unregistered vehicles? Where will the police store these thousands of seized vehicles and what will happen when the locals start throwing bricks at the officers who are confiscating their only form of transport?”
[1] “The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), one of the most respected research establishments in the world, found that the front guards or cosmetic parts generally do not significantly alter a car's crashworthiness.
Parts such as "fenders, quarter panels, door skins, bumper covers and trim aren't responsible for safeguarding occupants in a crash. They are irrelevant.”
[2] In 2018, a Dargaville garage, Dargaville Diesel Specialists, issued a Warrant of Fitness to an unsafe car that was involved in a fatal accident weeks later. NZTA says it should have suspended this garage’s WoF licence earlier.
