REAR VIEW:THE NATIONAL CAR Test is a bit like going to Ikea. For months you vow to go the next weekend, the next weekend, the next weekend, to pick up that lamp shade you've been meaning to get since 2006. Then you arrive home with 17 picture frames, a new couch, a bag full of plastic things and a wallet that is considerably lighter.
With the NCT, you take a perfectly functioning (well, almost) 12-year-old car into the test centre (eventually) and come home labelled a “failure” and with a car that has this, that, and the other “wrong” with it, emissions that are impossible to bring into line and a garage bill as long as your arm.
The NCT has become increasingly difficult to pass, particularly for those with older vehicles, which will inevitably develop minor problems as they age. The list of tested items on the Road Safety Authority website runs to 94 pages.
The primary function of the NCT is, of course, to have safer and cleaner vehicles on the roads, and who could possibly argue against saving lives?
It is also a pointless exercise arguing that the NCT is merely a revenue raising exercise by a private company, since there is no hard evidence to back up the claim.
However, what is about to happen with the NCT does not make any sense. From June 1st, owners of cars 10 years or older face an annual examination, rather than one every two years. In effect they will be expected to have a car that can equal – in terms of mechanical reliability and emissions – a car that rolled off the assembly line just a few years ago.
This is an unreasonable expectation for any motorist and will put an unreasonable cost on drivers already struggling with higher fuel bills.
Nobody can defend a motorist who takes to the roads in a vehicle that is a danger to himself or herself or other road users, and certainly nobody can condone law breaking. But the extension of NCT to an annual test for older cars is unfair and unwarranted.
Just like the authorities were forced to back down on new rules in relation to older taxis earlier this year, the new change with the NCT must also be reversed.