§ Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will initiate legislation to require insurers to cover vehicles which are now uninsured because they have dangerous defects which have caused them to fail their MOT tests.
§ Dr. GilbertNo. Sections 148 and 149 of the Road Traffic Act 1972, together with an agreement between my right hon. Friend and the Motor Insurers' Bureau, already protect third parties by securing the payment by insurers of any damages due in respect of liability for 91W death or personal injury which is compulsorily insurable. I see no reason, however, to remove the right of insurers to recover such payment from the policy holder where lack of proper maintenance is in issue, or to extend these provisions to relate to insurance not required by law.
§ Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many vehicles he estimates fail their MOT tests each year due to serious defects in steering, brakes and tyres, respectively.
§ Dr. GilbertThere is a required standard for each item tested, and test records do not show the margin by which individual vehicles have fallen short of any of those standards. During the period 1970–74 there were on average 10.5 million tests per annum with a failure rate of 35.3 per cent. The failure rate for steering was 18.9 per cent., for brakes 21.9 per cent. and for tyres 5.9 per cent.
§ Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many and what percentage of cars have failed their MOT tests during each period in each of the last 10 years for which records are available.
§ Dr. GilbertThe annual figures are as follows:
Year Total number of Tests Total failures Percentage failures 1965 4,370,857 1,444,133 33.0 1966 5,392,948 1,437,472 26.7 1967 7,282,225 2,098,171 28.8 1968 7,249,380 2,226,405 30.7 1969 8,259,852 2,640,495 32.0 1970 8,399,868 2,922,358 34.8 1971 10,632,314 3,761,565 35.4 1972 11,551,950 4,152,700 35.9 1973 10,658,850 3,783,150 35.5 1974 11,236,550 3,907,950 34.8
§ Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) in how many and in what percentage of road accidents involving death he estimates that defects in one or more vehicles were a contributory factor, during each of the last five years for which records are available;
(2) in how many and in what percentage of road accidents involving non-fatal injury he estimates that defects in one or more vehicles were a contributory 92W factor, during each of the last five years for which records are available;
(3) in how many and in what percentage of road accidents involving damage to vehicles he estimates that defects in one or more vehicles were a contributory factor, during each of the last five years for which records are available.
§ Dr. GilbertI regret that the information requested is not available on a national basis because the resources needed to conduct the necessary in-depth investigations would be disproportionate to the benefits that might be expected. It is, for example, extremely difficult to define the nature and severity of defects, and to standardise the attribution of the cause of accidents to particular factors. Special investigations are conducted by the TRRL into the causes of road accidents, and I would refer my hon. and learned Friend to the leaflets LF 392 Issue 2, published in April 1975, and LF 374, published in June 1973, entitled "Vehicle Defects and their Contribution to Road Accidents."