Just been to get my motorcycle MOT'd. Was chatting to the MOT tester who said,
He had noticed a marked increase in questions from insurance companies, the small print says your vehicle has to be road worthy, if it does not have an MOT and gets stolen then they could well not pay.
Apparently they are computerising the system. In the near future the MOT tester will have to enter onto the database when vehicles pass their MOT. All these cameras with number plate recognition will then be able to check on which cars are being use illegally. Big Brother is watching !!

Can't decide whether that's good or bad.

Good because it may keep some old [expletive deleted] off the road.

Bad because I'm not too keen on all these cameras watching.

Don't suppose we have any choice in the matter

All these new pieces of legislation,including camara's,presume that everyone on the road is legal.The scroats that nicked the Aero off one of our members,will not give a tinkers toss about any legislation and the police have downgraded car crime,unless that is you are tax'd insured and bothered to have the vehicle registered in your name,to a administrative chore.
The worst thing we can all do is shrug our shoulders and accept it,create hell,write to your MP,the newspapers anything,but accept nothing without a fight.

The MOT will be computerised as from early next year.... wonderful!

Since september last year the police could look your car up on the insurance database to see if the vehicle was insured or not... believe they can do that with tax not too, notice the post office scanning renewals with bar code scanner....

All this computerisation is all well and good but until DVLA can get their act together it is meaningless. 6 months after my brother did a PX when he was buying a newer car he got a letter from Warwickshire plod informing him that it had been in an accident and had failed to stop and unless he told them who the current owner was he could be charged.. DVLA had not got round to updating their systems

MOT computerisation is to stop fraud, from early next year a vts (vehicle testing station) won't hold mot certificates, your mot will be computer generated from swansea, at the time of the test, the system will also prevent a garage wrongly failing a vehicle to generate work which is not needed, it will be a fairer system and there won't be any dodgy mot certificates so the motorist should be better protected against unroadworthy vehicles, but the mot test is still a minimum standard on the day of the test, and yes when you go and tax your car at the post office, the system will show if your cars's mot is genuine

the system will also prevent a garage wrongly failing a vehicle to generate work which is not needed,[/b]Don't see how... as a tester its still me who decides if the car passes or fails. using the testers manual as my bible of course!
All that will happen is Whilst I'm testing I'll be 'logged' on with my smart card to the car I'm testing, the emissions will be linked directly to this too, to prevent the current paper mountain hopefully... But if I was that underhand, I could still fail the car on items that it shouldn't, the computer just takes my word as I type the VT30 out...