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Why regular vehicle inspections and maintenance are important

Posted on July 19, 2017

Even though human error is often cited as a contributing factor in most vehicle crashes, a recent Canadian Occupational Safety (COS) magazine story reports that a significant number of collisions in Ontario since 2014 were caused by transport trucks in poor operating condition.

Significant numbers of commercial vehicle operating issues were also found during the Canadian Vehicle Safety Alliance’s 2016 Road Check inspection blitz. During the three-day event, one fifth of the 62,000 commercial vehicles inspected were placed out of service due to critical item violations. Of those, brake adjustment and brake system violations combined to represent 45.7 per cent of the violations.1

Commercial vehicle inspections in BC

Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement is the BC member of the Canadian Vehicle Safety Alliance. CVSE officers conduct more than 30,000 vehicle inspections each year, issuing violation tickets and removing unsafe vehicles from the provincial roadways every day.

Faulty equipment blamed

Faulty brakes were also cited as a causal factor in the COS story. Other types of defective equipment mentioned were damaged axles, blown tires or detached wheels and defective hitches. Still others were unsecured loads or truck equipment flying into the path of other vehicles.

These are problems that regular vehicle inspections and maintenance may be able to identify before they become problems that cause or contribute to crashes.

Inspection and maintenance costs vs. crash costs

Many may believe that fixing or replacing faulty equipment is more expensive and time consuming than inspecting and maintaining it, but that is far from true. In fact, when you take into account potentially increased insurance costs and WorkSafeBC assessment fees, vehicle and employee replacement costs and lost productivity, inspection and maintenance costs are small in comparison.

An employer’s responsibility  

If enough argument, the fact is that regular vehicle inspections and maintenance are the legal responsibility of employers who have employees who drive for work, whether those employees drive a transport truck or other company vehicle or their own vehicle for work.

Resources available

Pages three and four of our Employers’ Guide to Road Safety Requirements list suggested work practices to address employer responsibilities for the inspection and maintenance of vehicles driven for work.

Two of the suggestions it contains are:

  • Have a written procedure by which the operator verifies that that a qualified person has inspected the vehicle and the inspection indicates the vehicle is safe to use
  • Conduct spot-checks and keep records of inspections as well as any associated reports and repairs or follow-up

Check out some sample daily and week pre-trip inspection forms and tips on how to conduct inspections and what to look for.

A handy tool to help with vehicle maintenance is AutoCheck which lists key vehicle components and how often you should expect they will require maintenance attention.

Act now

With all the factors that might possibly converge to result in a crash, regular vehicle inspections and maintenance are the most reliable and effective way to guard against a mechanical issue being a contributor, or a cause.

¹ These are the most recent statistics available for this event. The 2017 event took place in early June across Canada and results are not yet available.

Culled from: Roadsafetyarwork.ca

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Buying a Used Car: Why Is Service History Important?

If you’re interested in buying a used car, one of the pieces of advice you’ll hear most commonly is that you should try to find an example with documented service history, also known as service records or repair receipts. But why is this such an important item to have with your next used car?

You’ll Know About Prior Services

The most important reason to have your car’s previous service history is also the most obvious: It lets you know exactly when and where previous services have been performed. If you purchase a car without any prior service history, you’ll have no idea when it received its last oil change, for example. That means you should probably get an oil change right away, just to be on the safe side.

What about the last tire rotation? The brakes? The battery? With service records, you’ll know exactly when this work was carried out, which should give you a good idea of how long it will last.

Sometimes, the repair work might be more important, and more costly, than an oil change or a battery replacement. For example, in many cars, a timing belt must be changed every 75,000 or 100,000 miles. This can be a costly service, and failure to carry it out could result in a snapped belt and an engine replacement for several thousand dollars. How do you know if and when the timing belt has been replaced? Without service records, there’s no way to know apart from the word of the previous owner. That’s a big gamble, which is why you’ll want a repair record to add some certainty.

Shows Good Ownership

Another benefit of having service records goes beyond simple proof that vehicle maintenance has actually been carried out. A car with many service records shows a fastidious, organized car owner who’s willing to not only spend money on the vehicle but who’s also willing to keep the documents around for the next owner.

To us, proof of a high-quality prior owner is almost as important as the records themselves. If the previous owner has all the car’s documentation and repair receipts, you can bet that they took pride in the vehicle’s ownership and cared enough to document that pride for the next owner. While it isn’t a certain indicator that a used car is in excellent shape or needs nothing, a stack of repair receipts is always a good sign.

What If There Aren’t Any Records?

If you’re interested in buying a used car but can’t find one with service records, don’t worry. Sometimes, owners perform regular service but don’t care to keep the records, or they have legitimate reasons for not having records, such as accidentally throwing them out during a move.

While a car with records is likely worth more than one without, we wouldn’t turn down a car that didn’t have service history. But we’d insist on a thorough inspection from a trusted mechanic before signing the papers, just to be sure that there aren’t any major issues that have gone unattended for too long.

Culled from Autotrader.ca

Written by: Doug Demuro

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The value of a service history

We’re always told never to buy a car without a service history, but how much difference does it really make? Should you automatically discount the purchase of a used car just because its service history is missing or incomplete? And what difference does it make if the car has been serviced by an independent specialist rather than a franchised dealer?

Without a service history there’s always the suspicion that a car hasn’t been maintained properly, and while any history is therefore important, as a car gets older and its value drops a service history can make less of a difference depending on the car’s mileage and condition. It also matters what maintenance isn’t documented (such as a minor or major service) and how desirable the car is, because of its brand and type. For example, a five-year old petrol-engined city car will always find a buyer because such vehicles are very much in demand; a lack of service history will affect its value only marginally, while a car with a partial service history would be worth slightly more than one with nothing at all.

Contrast this with a fairly new premium executive car, which will be pretty much unsaleable without a service history, even though once again such cars are perennially in demand. A youngish premium car would also be expected to have a service history from the franchised network, whereas with an older one it would be acceptable to have a non-franchised history. A spokesman for The Car Buying Group told us: “How much difference a lack of service history makes to the value of a used car varies according to its make but we’d expect to knock at least 15% off what we offer for it.

“Depending on the car’s age and make a partial history might be acceptable, but if it’s more than two years old and comes with no history at all its value will be dramatically affected – it could be worth as much as 40% less than an equivalent car that comes with a full service history”.

Arnold Clark’s Adam Price comments: “If the car is still within its warranty period a service history is essential, but it doesn’t matter whether the work has been done by a franchised dealer or an independent. What matters is that it has those service stamps, because if something goes wrong and it hasn’t been maintained properly, no manufacturer will be able to honour the warranty. We take cars in part exchange even if they don’t have a service history and the price we pay is based on the car’s condition, although a service history does make it more attractive. If the car’s condition isn’t up to our standards for the forecourt we’ll put the car into auction regardless of the history that comes with it”.

When Kwik Fit quizzed 2000 car owners on how important a service history is to them when buying, almost half said that they wouldn’t even consider buying a car without a full complement of stamps in the book. Of those who would consider buying a car with an unknown history, they would do so only if they were paying significantly less to take on the potential risk. The average discount that buyers expected to receive was 19% compared with an equivalent car with a full history. Or to put it another way, miss out on a few hundred pounds’ worth of maintenance and the value of your car could plummet by a lot more.

Of the traders we spoke to, the consensus was that as long as the car has been maintained to the manufacturer’s schedule, where a car is serviced should make no difference to its value. However, it’s more desirable to have the franchised dealer history, particularly with prestige or executive cars, and these cars would be considered ahead of those with a non-franchised history.

Worcestershire-based car dealer Simon Rayner comments: “In many cases nowadays a car’s service history is recorded on a dealer network’s computer rather than in paper form, and accessing that information can be difficult later on. Somebody offered me a trade-in recently and although it was a decade old it had always been maintained by the official dealer. But because of data protection regulations only the current owner can access that information, so I couldn’t see what maintenance the car had had. As a result the vendor had to get everything printed out to prove that the car had been maintained”.

This computerisation is a double-edged sword because while it can make accessing records more difficult, it also makes it easier to obtain a duplicate service book, which most manufacturers can provide. Complications are rare; you’ll need to prove that you own the car, the book may be marked as a duplicate and it may be that the service records don’t go back to when the car was new, but piecing everything together is usually possible.

Crucially, many owners assume that for their warranty to remain intact they have to get their car serviced at a franchised dealer. However, according to European law this isn’t the case; car makers have to allow independent specialists access to the necessary diagnostic equipment at a “reasonable cost”. The key is to stick to the recommended servicing schedules and to use OE-quality parts. This is why it’s always worth shopping around at service time, because over the years that you own a car, you could save on maintenance costs while ensuring your car retains as much value as possible by keeping up that service history.

Written by: Richard Dredge

Culled from: HPI.CO.UK