More scaremongering

There is a Hands Off the WOF Facebook group set up by the MTA. They of course want to force people to keep getting six monthly WOFs, despite all the evidence being the costs massively outweigh the benefits. I’m surprised they don;t go the whole hog and advocate weekly WOF checks.

Anyway they posted this week about a worn brake rotor, and said this was proof you needed six monthly WOFs. They said:

This brake rotor has completely worn through one side and separated from the central hub, meaning the owner of this van had been driving around with brakes on one side only stopping his vehicle (the one shown intact in this image). 

The van owner only brought it in for a check up because he heard ‘a noise coming from the front’. Aside from the fact that this is a significant component failure, it still had 8 months left on its WoF.

First of all, it actually shows that drivers will get cars checked out when there are problems. But the more important point is made by a commenter:

Anyone with any commonsense is going to look at this wonder how it was allowed to get anywhere near this condition.

It is pretty obvious that the car shouldn’t have got anywhere near getting a clean WOF checks four months earlier. There is no way it goes from okay to the state displayed in four months. I think it actually shows that the current system is no guarantee of safety – it is just a guarantee of revenue.