Bedford Driving Lessons

More than 600,000 cars on Britain’s roads have been “clocked” so they show lower mileages, the BBC has learned. When vans and motorbikes are taken into account, MOT data shows the official mileage of 716,291 vehicles is lower than a year earlier. The figures have prompted fears that large numbers of drivers are being misled about used cars’ true mileage. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills insists existing laws are sufficient to deal with the problem. BBC Radio’s 5 live Investigates programme secretly recorded calls to 10 web-based mileage correction services, each operating from a mobile phone number. Six were willing to help wind back the clock on a car, even though they knew it was being done with the intention of deceiving a potential purchaser. The figures about reduced mileage were revealed as a result of Freedom of Information (FoI) request to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa). They show that in the year to March 2010, the recorded mileage on MOT certificates for 669,127 cars had dropped compared with that recorded on the previous certificates issued 12 months earlier. There was a similar problem with 26,512 motorbikes and 19,224 delivery vans. Vosa says there could be valid reasons why a reading might go lower, including data-inputting errors, or technical faults with the odometer – which records a vehicle’s mileage. More