Getting older vehicles through their ITV inspection is getting more and more difficult because quite frankly, the authorities don’t want them on the road.

You need only look at pass/fail statistics to see this. Looking at the failure rates in Madrid and Andalucía (which between them represent a quarter of the national total) you can see that only 5.9% of cars 5-years old or less fail inspection.

Vehicles between five and 10-years old have a 11% failure rate, whereas those between 10 and 15-years old have a 20% rate. When you’re dealing with cars that have been on the road for over 15 years, one in four of them fail their ITV inspection.

In Málaga, 30% of cars of 10 or more years fail.

But things are set to get tougher as the new, more stringent, testing will come into effect next week meaning that the failure rate will soar.

So the unspoken plan is to force people to buy new cars. Unfortunately, there is no plan to make it affordable to do so.

Furthermore, whereas the Government it making cars safer through grueling ITV inspections, the actual conditions of road surfaces on B-roads continues to deteriorate, thanks to insufficient funding for road maintenance so that no matter how safe your car is, there is a greater probability of having an accident.

In other words, you, the car owner, are forced by the Government to spend money you don’t have whereas they clearly won’t do the same.

(News: Spain)