‘Marketplace’ sent Henry Epp to find out: Do safety inspections make your car safer or put your wallet at risk?
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As the article seems to say, anything states do it’s wrong for someone. There are only safethy inspections on vehicles when they change hands in Naryland. About 35 years ago I sold a car myself and got the safety inspection before selling the car. They gave me a list of things I needed like new brake pads and rear light replacement. I had just replaced the brakes a month before their inspection and didn’t believe them. When I picked the car up, I made them show me the brakes and prove that the lights were out. There were no problems at all. Based on the way the service advisor acted, it seemed to me that they had a number of complaints like mine and maybe had the state police involved already.
About 10 years ago the MD legislature considered starting an annual inspection. Enough legislators balked that they ended up with a rule allowing state and local police to stop a car if they noticed a violation, like nonfunctional tail lights. I was stopped once for a burned out tail light but it was functioning when I got home. I went to the local police station and showed them that the lights were functioning and even told the officer that I did nothing and that the Prince George’s County police stopped me for no good reason. He signed off on the citation. I took the citation to the closest State Police station and turned it in. I told the corporal thate same story, I was still angry. He sent it to his HQ and that was the end of it.
Many states have laws in place to help prevent fraud. Some states do their own inspections and don’t do repairs. The system can be abused (and it has). But I know for a fact they have kept some really unsafe vehicles off the road.
Generalizations such as this are essentially useless–IMO.
Do some shops/mechanics/inspection stations find issues that are truly trivial? Surely, that is true in some–perhaps many–cases.
But, this is tantamount to saying that an Annual Physical Exam is a ripoff if it doesn’t actually find any serious conditions lurking in your body. My Annual Physical Exam found nothing serious… until the year when it DID find an extremely-serious, life-threatening condition.
I’m alive today, only because of the alarming findings from my Annual Physical Exam in 2022.
I will continue to have an annual physical exam, and I will continue to abide by my state’s regulations regarding “inspections”.
Regarding the inspections, in my state the inspections are not done by repair shops, and instead are done by an agency that merely does the inspection, and that doesn’t perform any repairs. Perhaps all states should do things this way.
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Just what we need another state contract with a private company to nose around our cars. We have annual smog inspections in MD. The station we use has four bays with technicians. It also has a kiosk around the side where I can test it myself. I plug a connector into the OBDII port and get a printout certifying that my car passed (or not). The only time the techs don’t read the OBDII port (only) is if there is no port. I suppose that these places could be modified to add lifts and other equipment for several million dollars but given the extra time needed for a safety inspection, we’d probably need to double the number of inspection stations.
As someone that turned wrenches in a state with zero safety inspections for non commercial vehicles, we have some VERY unsafe vehicles on the road, although I don’t think the government needs to be involved, something needs to happen… If you bring your car in and we see a ball joint about to break, at most, the only thing we can do is, at the shops expense, to have the car towed to your house, but as soon as the vehicle hits the ground, by law you can drive off in it… Had a store manager explain how bad a tie rod end was to a lady, she said I have an appt for her dog to be groomed, he said lady I hope you can ride your dog home cause the car won’t make it, she stormed out (as expected lol), well still in sight, the tie rod separated and almost caused a crash… Stupid… Had a Durango with VERY loose ball joints late one Friday, customer said will take it home (very close by) and bring it back Monday morning, well Monday morning while raising the vehicle a ball joint or 2 separated… Raised a used car lot car up, entire rear cradle stayed on the ground… Caliper locked up, ground down the rotor until the rotor broke away from the rotor hat, wheel spun freely, customer drove away… I’ve towed a older rwd cars that the front ends were so loose that the car would change lanes with the steering wheel strapped and locked tight… I could right a book on this crap…
But some people truly can not/could not afford the repairs, others were just too cheap or hard headed to understand the safety aspect of it…
Told and showed a customer one time that their rear wheel cylinders were leaking, they asked what would happen if they blew out, I smiled and said what ever is in front of you will help you stop, don’t worry about it… We did the job asap… lol
I do not have a good answer at all to the issue, but maybe there should be some kind of safety inspection for cars that are x amount of years old, but then it becomes a tax on the poor…
Maybe a free or really cheap inspection that only informs the customer of safety issues only… again, I don’t have any answers…
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I agree with you. One of our past governors–Christine Todd Whitman–eliminated state staffing at the state inspection stations, and awarded the contract to a private company. The actual cost of each inspection doubled after the privatization, and that company (whose name escapes me at the moment) produced chaos during the first winter. The printers that they used to print documents froze–literally–and motorists were left standing in the cold for a couple of hours on many days, with no shelter in inclement weather. Later, another governor–Chris Christie–eliminated the safety part of the inspection, leaving just the OBD check of emissions.
That company still holds the contract, and even though they are still gouging the state for more money than it would cost to have state employees staffing the stations, at least they finally got their act together, and on my last few visits, I was in and out within 15 minutes.
Several years ago I read a study that examined two states with similar population and geography, one had safety inspections and one didn’t. The studyt concluded that there was no difference in fatality rates per million miles driven between the two. So do safety inspections save lives? No they don’t.
But what is debatable is how much time and energy is wasted and how many injuries result from that car that tosses a ball joint on the freeway, or loses brakes behind a school bus. And how many unwanted windshield replacements or body repairs occur because a state inspector says so.
Where I live rust is a myth unless you use your vehicle to launch a boat into salt water, so of course I oppose body and frame inspections. I have a pickup with a windshield cracked all the way across–been that way for 12 years and I have no intention of fixing it. But there are places where those kinds of things are state requirements. Maybe they’re a good idea for those places.
It was Parsons Technology
Yes!
Thank you!
And, shortly after Ms. Whitman’s term in office ended, her Director of Communications became the CEO of Parsons Technologies. But, I’m SURE that there was no financial hanky-panky involved with awarding that long-term contract to Parsons.
And, if you believe that, I can sell you a bridge that connects Brooklyn & Manhattan.
The federal government has a rule that any contract administrator cannot go to work for the contractor in question for at least 2 years after retirement or quitting.
Given that there is no difference in fatalities, it seems like it is a waste of time and money and ripe for corruption in both private and public operated facilities.
I’ve seen some serious junk running down the roads in my long driving history. The 3 year old Hemi Charger with no visible rear tread. The E-class Mercedes with a jumping rear tire. Endless cars dragging their front splash trays down the highway. The old Chevy/Ford/Ram pickup with fenders flapping in the breeze shedding rust, blowing blue smoke and seeping fluids like an Ebola patient. And seemingly EVERY Hyundai and Kia with no right rear brake lights. (Why only the right??)
You can say it is a regressive tax on the poor, but even poor people need to maintain their vehicles. I see plenty of fairly late model cars with seemingly upscale drivers that need serious maintenance, too.
Normally I’d just let Darwinism sort things out but all too often innocents get involved. I don’t think there is a good solution to this.
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He resigned prior to the end of her term in office, and then–I guess–that he managed to squeak-in under the wire, time-wise for that plum CEO position.
Or, maybe he was in violation of that rule, and Dubya’s DOJ failed to prosecute him. Let’s not forget that Ms. Whitman became the EPA Administrator, so let’s just say that she… had friends in high places.
My post was more follow-on to yours. I wasn’t disputing anything you wrote.
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Hey! That was @davesmopar and he’s a friend! Back off! 
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How much did it cost the state to operate those inspection stations? I suspect they saved millions by closing state operated stations, then placing the financial burden on the vehicle owners via private inspection station fees.
If it was Dave, then those were likely M&H Racemaster slicks on that Hemi!
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The rolling wrecks in California usually have bald tires and slide off the road whenever it rains. Lets do seventy on the L.A. freeway system with our burned out wipers. I had a windshield with three big rock damage areas. Routine pre-purchase inspections oftem result in $350 repair estimates.
The cheapest thing to do is keep your car maintained. Annual inspections could decrease the total cost of ownership for many, perhaps most, owners. Everybody here knows how to fix their own cars and addresses problems soon. People aren’t poor because they don’t have money; they don’t have money because they’re poor.
I read that that will keep the airbag from working - perhaps your pickup lacks one.
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