Since 2013 the failure rate for powered two wheeled vehicles has been consistently dropping. The DVSA (Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency) released figures that show between April-June in 2022 85.2% of the 337,000 motorcycles tested passed first try.
This also means that only 14.8% of people failed their MOT on the first attempt. Of all the failures half of them were due to one dangerous fault. Only 8.56% percent of motorcycles would fail their retest.
There has been a drop in failed MOT results since the 2021-2022 annual figures. A total of 962,802 powered two wheeled vehicles were tested. Only 15.52% failed on their first attempt and 9.1% failed their retest.
There has been a consistent trend that there has been an increased amount of powered two-wheel vehicles passing their MOT on the first attempt since the 2013-14 annual figures. Back in 2013-14 nearly one in five bikes, 19.9%, of bikes failed the MOT on their first attempt and 11.9% failing the retest.
In the April-June time frame for MOT’s the powered two-wheel vehicles had a higher pass rate than any of the other vehicle groups. Out of six million cars that had MOTs in this time 27.54% of the cars failed on their first attempt and 21.44% failed their retest.
Jim Freeman, Chair of the BMF (British Motorcyclists Federation), said: “That looks like good news. I’m not sure what the definition of a ‘dangerous' fault is, or if it’s based on subjective opinion by the tester. I’d bet that many of them are tyres and brakes, particularly on smaller ‘commuter scooters’ where maintenance can be a ‘distress purchase’, as it is with many car drivers.”
