Swiss media raise alarm: Around 600,000 vehicles are circulating on the country's roads without being checked

Thousands of cars are circulating in Switzerland without being checked – they should have been checked long ago. Why are the road traffic authorities lagging behind?

This is the issue that Swiss media have recently raised, according to which cars should be regularly inspected by the cantonal traffic office, reports Telegraph.

As is known, new cars should be inspected for the first time after five years and then every two to three years.

But in many places in Switzerland, road traffic authorities are lagging behind.

As a result, he writes Blick.ch, reports Telegraph, there are currently over 600,000 cars on the road across the country that should have been checked a year ago, based on research by Radio SRF.

"Therefore, many cantonal road traffic authorities can no longer cope with the required inspections. The number of uninspected vehicles is particularly high in the canton of Bern, where the number of uninspected vehicles has almost tripled in the last two years," the Swiss media writes.

And according to him, the reasons are: the number of vehicles that is constantly growing, the used car trade that is booming, and the coronavirus pandemic that has also left its mark – during the isolation, many inspections had to be suspended and rescheduled for later.

However, authorities do not see any security problems.

According to them, since staff is scarce, vehicles are being given priority "based on risk."

According to the SRF report, commercial vehicles such as taxis or trucks are being inspected as soon as possible, while private cars are inspected later.

Despite the backlog of work, the Federal Roads Office (Astra) currently does not see any acute safety problems: only about one percent of accidents are due to technical defects, it told SRF.

However, the AGVS automotive trade association warns of growing risks because the average age of vehicles in Switzerland is increasing.

According to authorities, responsibility for the condition of a car still clearly lies with the owners. /Telegraph/