How to find a faulty vehicle
When a car manufacturer seeks to tell vehicle owners that there is a defect affecting a particular model, it may use the DVLA database to send out letters to possibly thousands and thousands of relevant car owners.
If the information concerns a safety defect, then it is also on the website of the Vehicle & Operator Services Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Transport.
But what about those cases where the defect is judged not to be a safety risk? VOSA has turned down a freedom of information requests for details of such 'non-safety recalls'. Its policy is not to make the information generally public, arguing that people 'might simply form an incorrect judgment about the competence of a manufacturer to build a fault-free vehicle'.
The Information Commissoner has today , ruling that if the information about a defect is already available to potentially thousands of vehicle keepers then it cannot be considered confidential. The decision also states that the way to stop the public forming an incorrect view of manufacturers' reliability is to provide an appropriate explanation of the information.
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