THE NATIONAL Car Test (NCT) is to start annual tests for cars 10 years or older from June 1st.
A spokeswoman for Applus+, the company which carries out the test, confirmed that cars which are 10 years or older will have to be tested annually from June onwards. However, she said backlogs for tests like those experienced at the beginning of last year were not expected when the annual testing comes into effect this summer.
“This will only have an impact on us in 2012 as these cars were due to be tested that year,” she explained.
She also noted that, while the NCT applied to cars which were more than 10 years old, classic cars registered before 1980 would not be affected by the NCT changes.
Almost 894,000 full NCTs were carried out over the course of 2010, with a pass rate of 51.7 per cent of vehicles passing the test first time round.
Just over 419,000 retests were carried out in the same period with nine out of 10 vehicles passing the retest. The main reasons for vehicles failing the NCT were faulty break lines, indicators and headlamps and inadequate tyres. The number of full NCTs carried out last year increased by more than 29,000 in comparison to the year ending 20009, while the number of retests increased by 14,151.
However, the number of dangerous failures dropped from 6,554 in 2009 to 4,428 in 2010, a decrease of a third in a one-year period. The number of dangerous fails on retest also dropped from 556 in 2009 to 494 last year.
The jump in the number of failures in 2009 may be put down to the introduction of penalty points for driving a vehicle without a valid NCT in 2009, resulting in a surge of applications for car tests, with more than 100,000 drivers booking a national car test in the fortnight prior to the changes.