castrolrobi havent seen the car but can only speculate,most times a brake pipe goes pop its because its rotten(most likely)/fouling a moving component or badly damaged be it metal or rubber,a basic visual check of the area(its leaking so it shouldnt be hard to spot,get someone to press the brake while you look)will tell you if thats the case or not.part of an mot is pressing the brake,primarily to find problems such as this and also to obtain readings showing the brake efforts.when you drive a car you wont generally press em as hard as we do in the course of this.yes its possible that they deliberately damaged your car but its pretty unlikely.count your lucky stars it popped on them instead of you whilst driving down the road.many vehicles(bmw + mercedes in particular)have pipes which rot behind plastic undertrays which render them invisible and thus get used till they pop as no one testing it will have ever seen em.most popular ones i have had go west are astra fronts,meriva rear crossaxle,merc/bmw rears,mondeo+vectra rears at the subframe/fuel tank areas,renault trafic/vivaro front to rear but there are MANY more.look at the mot history of your vehicle,its available as an online .gov resource.see if theres any mention of corroded brake pipes or covers hindering inspections of same.i personally as a tester have seen dozens and have refused to test dozens more for the same reason,its nothing unusual.finally for your own peace of mind assuming im correct then it wont be the only pipe with problems.ok so you think the testers an idiot?get an independant assessment of the fault,its cause and condition.if by some miracle a tester has been mad enough to delibrately sabotage a random customers brakes they will be able to tell you and at that point you can appeal to the ministry about the testers conduct or indeed call the police as that would be a SERIOUS criminal matter but i can be pretty certain it wont be the case.please post again with better information after finding out all the above.we only test cars,we dont vandalise them.the test is conducted as a basic physical check and the most we do is operate the vehicle controls(in this case the brake pedal)and lift it in the air.none of this should cause a problem unless said pipe was so rotten/damaged/fouling that it was on its last legs anyway in which case if visible you would have failed the test merely on its condition in any case.finally assuming its a modern vehicle its impossible for the brakes to fail completely in a single incident as it has whats called dual circuit brakes so you will have very soft/spongy pedal with a small amount of braking at the very end of its travel operating 1 front + 1 rear brake which while not much beats none at all.please tell us what the actual condition of the failed component is.
