Lighting and electrical MOT failures
Lighting and electrical faults account for 19.9% of MOT failures. What the tester checks, why cars fail, and which models fail this most.
What are lighting and electrical MOT failures?
Lighting is the single most common MOT failure and the cheapest to put right. A blown headlight, brake-light or number-plate bulb, a cracked lens, or a headlamp beam that points too high or low will all fail. Most are a two-minute bulb swap.
How common are lighting and electrical MOT failures?
Lighting and electrical faults account for 19.9% of all recorded MOT failures, making them the single most common reason cars fail. That share is drawn from the categorised defect records of 16,764 car models in the DVSA data.
| Failure area | Share of all failures |
|---|---|
| Lamps & electrical | 19.9% |
Which cars fail most on lighting and electrical?
These models lose the largest share of their own MOT failures to lighting and electrical items. The percentage is the portion of each model's failures that fall in this area, among models with a large test sample.
| Model | Share of its failures | Overall failure rate | Tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercedes-Benz 308 | 62.2% | 38.7% | 98,712 |
| Mercedes-Benz 208 | 58.8% | 36.7% | 88,481 |
| Mercedes-Benz 312 | 58.3% | 35.6% | 26,314 |
| Citroen C | 58.2% | 35.3% | 5,105 |
| Mercedes-Benz 410 | 58.1% | 34.1% | 9,567 |
| Aprilia Rx50 | 57.9% | 35.6% | 5,040 |
| Tata Loadbeta | 57.7% | 37.8% | 14,096 |
| Reliant Robin | 57.6% | 28.9% | 54,429 |
| Volkswagen Kombi | 57.2% | 29.5% | 5,757 |
| Mercedes-Benz 207 | 57.1% | 34.7% | 7,160 |
| Chevrolet Astro | 56.3% | 28.6% | 8,437 |
| Volkswagen Karmann | 56.2% | 26.8% | 12,196 |
| Citroen C25 | 56.2% | 36.2% | 11,258 |
| Renault R4 | 56.2% | 32.8% | 5,634 |
| Volkswagen 1500 | 55.9% | 29.9% | 5,945 |
Other MOT failure areas
How the other DVSA failure areas break down, each with the models that fail it most.
Sources: DVSA MOT History API: MOT test results and defect data ยท DVSA MOT testing data for Great Britain