MOT data

One car in 16 failed its MOT on tyres in 2025

3 min read · Published 6 October 2026

More than two million cars failed their MOT on tyres in 2025: one in every 16 tested. We went through all 33.2 million car MOTs in Great Britain last year. Here's what stood out.

2.07 million cars (6.2%) failed on tyres. Nearly three-quarters of those, 1.49 million, had a tyre fault graded dangerous.
Tyres were part of more than one in five failed MOTs.
Worn tread was the top reason, recorded 976,000 times, followed by cuts and exposed cords.
About 160,000 cars failed because the tyre pressure monitoring system wasn't working. Here's how to reset the warning light on your make.
Another 8.5 million cars passed with a tyre advisory, most often tread worn close to the limit, or cracking rubber.
Electric cars failed on tyres about 60% more often than petrol, diesel and hybrid cars of the same age, and at every mileage. More on tyres on electric cars.

Mileage matters most

Cars that had covered more than 90,000 miles were more than twice as likely to fail on tyres as cars under 30,000: 7.7% against 3.5%. Age matters too, with the rate rising from 5.0% at a car's first MOT to around 7% from ten years old.

Under-inflation hides in plain sight

Testers only recorded about 72,000 tyres as obviously under-inflated, because they only flag the obvious ones. A tyre can be well below its correct pressure without looking flat, and running soft wears the edges and makes the tyre easier to damage: the very faults that fail MOTs.

No winter spike

The tyre failure rate stayed between 6.1% and 6.4% every month of the year. Tyres wear out whatever the season, so check the tread, the sidewalls and the pressures once a month. Here's what the MOT tester looks for.

Source: our analysis of DVSA's anonymised MOT data for 2025: 33,210,951 first MOT tests of cars (class 4) that ended in a pass or fail. A tyre failure is at least one tyre fault graded major or dangerous, including the tyre pressure monitoring system. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.