Just be even about it. From the Traffic Commisioner's Annual Report for 2003-2004:
"As in 2002ö03, when licences in SEMTA reduced in number by 2%, the licensing figures disguise a small increase in the number of vehicles authorised under such licences, thus demonstrating a slow but consistent trend towards fewer operators operating more vehicles. This change may explain the slightly improved road safety trend evidenced by the results of spot checks by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA), which show that in 2003ö04 25.4% of vehicles and 36.2% of trailers inspected at the road side within SEMTA attracted prohibition notices compared with 27.4% and 38.5% respectively in 2002ö03. Nevertheless, these figures not only remain wholly unacceptable, and would not be tolerated (for instance) in the rail or air industries, but they exclude foreign vehicles checked in SEMTA which have a 27.1% prohibition rate for vehicles and 41.6% failure rate for trailers!"
That's from the commissioner for the South-East. I could not find any national figures.
I don't know what the defect rates would be for private vehicles - my cars haven't had an MOT advisory for years, let alone fail notices, and they are not serviced every six weeks nor inspected daily.
-- Dogs crawl under fences, Software crawls under Windows
