Mileage Checker: We Checked The Mileage of 1 Million Vehicles

Please note: We have since performed a much larger test of 7 million vehicles, you can find this test on our blog post here.

Vehicle clocking and mileage issues are a potential problem for used car buyers, the scale of the problem is what we want to go into in this blog post, we are writing this blog post after checking the mileage of 1 million vehicles.

We performed this test using the same methods as our free mileage history checking tool that is publicly available for anyone to use, basically if the mileage has been lowered between MOT tests or has a mixture of odometer readings (miles and kilometres), we class it as a fail.

If you want to check your vehicle for mileage issues (for free), then enter the vehicle registration below.

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The main problem with clocking is, it’s very difficult (if not impossible in most cases) to tell if a vehicle has been clocked just by looking at it and the bigger issue is, you’re paying over the odds for a vehicle that could be worth thousands less (if the seller isn’t honest that is).

The Overall Findings

We started this test on the 14^th July 2019 and reached 1,000,000 checked vehicles on the 2^nd August 2019 (that’s 19 days of testing!). On the 2^nd August 2019 we started compiling this data to produce the figures you see here.

Total vehicles checked: 1,000,000 (1 million)

Total vehicles that failed the mileage test: 64,986 out of 1,000,000

Total fail rate in percent: 6.49%

Mileage Failures Broken Down

Failed on lowered mileage: 60,501 out of 1,000,00

Percentage of above: 6.05%

Failed from mixture of odometer readings (miles and kilometres): 7509 out of 1,000,000

Percentage of above: 0.75%

Failed on both mixed readings and lowered mileage: 3024 out of 1,000,000

Percentage of above: 0.30%

Fail Rates By Make & Model

Shown below are the fail rates by make and model, we have removed any vehicles that have less than 100 fails in total or 1000 checks in total as this isn’t enough data.

Explanation of the data above:

• Make & Model – The make and model of the vehicle.
• Total Failed – How many failed out of the Total Checked for this make + model.
• Total Checked – The total checked from the 1,000,000 list.
• Fail Rate – The fail percentage for the make + model (worked out using Total Failed and Total Checked data)

Fail Rates By Year of Vehicle Registration

Shown below are the fail rates by year of vehicle registration, we have removed any vehicles that have less than 100 fails in total or 1000 checks in total as this isn’t enough data.

Explanation of data above:

• Year – The year of vehicle registration
• Total Fails – How many vehicles failed mileage check.
• Total Checks – Total vehicles checked by year of vehicle registration.
• Fail Rate – Worked out by using Total fails and Total Checks data.

Average Yearly Mileage of Passed VS Failed Vehicles

We thought it may be useful to see if there’s any difference between the average yearly mileage of a vehicle that’s failed the mileage check VS a vehicle that passed the mileage check, this is what we found.

Average Yearly Mileage of Passed Vehicle (935,014 Passed):

9662

Average Yearly Mileage of Failed Vehicle (64,986 Failed):

9251

Average Amount Of Miles Lowered On Clocked Vehicle

We took the 60,501 vehicles that failed on lowered mileage and created a quick mini test to see what the average amount of mileage removed was. Here’s the average figure we got:

70,098

Estimated Number Of Vehicles With Mileage Issues In The UK

To get an estimated figure we must first know how many vehicles are in the UK. According to racfoundation.org there are 38.2 million vehicles in the UK.

Our overall fail percentage for this test was: 6.49%

6.49% of 38,200,000 =

2,479,180

This makes the total estimated vehicles with mileage issues in the UK just over 2.4 million.

More information about this data

How we performed this test

We created a custom piece of software that uses the same rules as our free mileage history checking tool, the software then saved a big log file for us to analyse.

The length of time it took to collect this data

It took 19 days in total to check and collect the mileage data of 1 million vehicles. We started this test on the 14^th July 2019 and it ended on the 2^nd August 2019.

Where we got the mileage data from

We got the vehicle mileage data from the gov.uk MOT API.

The point of this test

To get a bigger and better understanding of how many vehicles in the UK have mileage issues. And we know that the more data collected the more accurate the results. According to the racfoundation.org there’s 38.2 million vehicles in the UK, that means we almost tested 1 out of every 38 vehicles in the UK on this test.

Sneak peak at the 1 million spreadsheet?

Apologies for the length of this video, it’s 37 minutes long in total and we had to speed it up at that!

This video scrolls all the way through the 1 million rows of vehicle data we collected.

Need more info?

If you have an interest in this data or the test we carried out, we would love to chat! You can contact us at: enquiries@rapidcarcheck.co.uk