3,000 dangerous cars removed from the road by NCT so far this year

More than 3,000 cars have been labelled as dangerous and have been towed away from NCT centres around the country in the first half of 2015, new figures have revealed.

The statistic is already on track to be significantly higher than in 2014, where 4,800 cars were removed from the road after failing their NCT and deemed too dangerous to drive.

The figures, which were published by Applus yesterday, revealed that more cars have failed their NCT tests in the first half of this year than have passed them.

More than 820,000 have had an NCT already this year and of those 51pc failed, while 48pc passed. A total of 3,059 cars were taken off the road.

More than 90pc of cars that failed passed the NCT the second time around while the top causes of fails this year were defects in the front suspension, headlamps, tyre condition, brake line and stop lamps.

Registrations with the year 2011, 2009, 2007 and models which are ten years or older will go through the NCT this year.

The AA stressed that the number of dangerous cars taken off the road is relatively small considering the number of cars which have gone through the NCT this year.

The latest figures have lead to predictions that there will be a record number of NCTs carried out this year.