VRT failures related to vehicle emissions doubled last year from 2010 after Transport Malta intensified its monitoring of VRT stations.

The enhanced inspection regime, brought about by the intensified enforcement actions undertaken by Transport Malta, resulted in a substantial increase in the VRT failure rate, both as regard the overall conditions of the vehicles tested and also the emissions related figures," the audit office said in a report on vehicle emission control schemes.

The increased enforcement also saw an increased rate of VRT failures related to brakes, lights, suspensions and other checks.

The audit office said that increased enforcement resulted in cautious VRT station operators preferring to fail a vehicle in border-line cases out of fear of being fined or having penalty points imposed.

During the second half of 2010 Transport Malta developed criteria to enable it to identify testing stations which posed a risk to the integrity of VRT certification. The criteria included those stations which performed a high number of tests but whose failure rate was lower than the average by three percentage points or higher by five percentage points; those whose failure rate was seven percentage points lower or 10 percentage points higher than the average, and those stations which were the subject of three or more public complaints or had three or more infringements over the past three years.

The profiled of 14 of the 37 testing stations fitted these criteria.

The audit office said that while these increased inspections yielded positive results,  substantial variation in testing stations'  failure rates, including those related to emissions, were still evident. It said that there were still some limitations in inspection targeting practices which were hindering Transport Malta from optimising the effectiveness of its enforcement measures.

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