The annual appointment – or biannual, if your car is less than ten years old – with the ITV is never usually a dish of good taste. It’s expensive, it breaks our schedules, and if your car has gone on for years and kilometers, it has a component of uncertainty that makes us very nervous. Gas tests, without going any further, are a common source of failure. But the most common serious defects, and the reason for one in four unfavorable MOTs, are not gases. Is a completely avoidable flaw by the driver and very easy to correct.
According to the results of a report published by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism and the Spanish Association of Collaborating Entities of the Administration in the Technical Inspection of Vehicles (AECA-ITV) and collected by Europe Pressthe 26% of cars with serious defects in the ITV – that is, with an unfavorable ITV to their credit – they have defects in their lighting and signaling systems. That is, failures in the car lights. These elements are usually the first to be reviewed when the technical inspection begins.
In this article we tell you what you should check yourself before passing the ITV to your car.
The lights are fundamental elements of the vehicle, since their function is not only to see, but above all, to be seen. The slight lighting defectswhich will not make us return to the ITV are the following:
A burnt-out license plate light (if we have two) A burnt-out position light A burnt-out brake light A burnt-out main beam (high beam) One of the side turn signals that does not work Failure of one of the two fog lights Failure of one of the reversing lights if there is more than one Reflector partially broken or in poor condition
With respect to this list, the failure of the two position lights, for example, would be considered a serious fault, as would the lack of license plate lights or both brake lights burned out. Among others serious failures Common are the following:
The rear fog lamps do not work Any of the four turn signals do not work There is a burnt-out dipped beam Headlights too high Both brake lights do not work No reversing light comes on No license plate light comes on Broken lights or loose No rear reflectors
All luminous devices must be in good physical condition and be approved, in addition to not having different colors than the regulatory ones.
Lighting failures are easily avoidable. The pre-ITV inspection that we should all do to our car is really simple. To verify that all the light elements in our car work, when it is dark or in a parking lot, we will turn on all the lights in the car, and we will check that they all work. We can do it alone, perhaps getting out of the car a couple of times, or with the help of someone. A trick to not require anyone’s help is to turn on the lights next to a wall, and check their operation without getting out of the car.
