Have you noticed cars with only one headlight?
Have you been in a crash due to some mechanical faults, like brakes failing?
Should yoour car insurance increase if you have not had an inspection?
Have you broken an axle in a road hole anywhere? In NJ?
We can’t afford inspection, so we must repair our cars and our bodies.
Florida hasn’t inspected cars in more than a decade.
I’ve never been in a crash due to some mechanical faults, like brakes failing.
My insurance rates are quite reasonable.
I haven’t broken an axle in a road hole anywhere.
Seriously, if you rear-end the car in front of you, and you try to blame the fact that one of its three brake lights was burned out, we would all know you were being careless. Just drive safely and carefully and these issues should never cause a collision.
I agree with Whitey. This may surprise some of you but vehicle inspections are all about the money for the most part. State vehicle inspection programs have very little to do with vehicle “safety”.
I have no earthly idea what this post says or what its context is. However, completely unlike missileman I am glad that my state requires yearly inspections and they are absolutely, positively not a useless exercise in money making whole being removed from concerns about safety.
About half the states, including California, have no “Safety Inspection” Accident rates in these states is the same or lower than in states that DO inspect cars…Insurance companies don’t care either way because to them it makes no difference. These “inspections” are what keeps all the remaining Mom & Pop Gas Stations in business…Without this welfare program, most of them would be gone in a year…
The same holds true for “Emissions Testing”…Not enough cars fail the test to make ANY difference in air quality, the stated goal of doing the test…It’s the revenue stream and how that stream flows that counts…Hopeless cars with persistent CEL problems migrate to areas that do not require testing and are sold there, the CEL permanently extinguished. Life goes on…
Sorry Cig, but when I lived in Mass. I drove some clapped out vehicles…I ALWAYS managed to get a “Safety Sticker” one way or the other…Safety inspections are a joke…
Here in Colorado we only have emissions inspections (typically every other year for newer cars), and no safety inspections.
When you first buy a car, the first 4 years don’t require an emissions test. After that period, the car needs the test done at a facility, or a drive by roadside testing van. Though if you’re brave, you can put your plate on a cleaner car, and drive it past the roadside emissions vans twice in the 10 month period before your registration is due, and cheat the system that way.
I’ve seen way too many vehicles on the side of the roads up here that have obvious signs of failed upper or lower ball joints all the time. At least 1 vehicle a week, and that’s just on my normal commute. I bet if I went out of my way to drive on the highways in the crappier sections of town, I would see a drastic increase in disabled vehicles.
A good inspection system that isn’t profit driven, would tell owners that their cars are about to fall apart.
BC.
Caddy, we’ve actually had this conversation before. “The safety inspection system isn’t perfect” absolutely does not support the conclusion “Safety inspection systems are useless”
I have several friends that have repair facilities (of different types) and all say they loose money on the inspections. In New York it takes 15 minuets to do a proper inspection and they get about $8 for that so they are making a whopping $32 an hour, sure sounds like that is a “welfare program” to me. they have to pay the mechanics more than that. But for them to be a registered repair shop they have to do them, and also maintain a computer system to do them with.
I think if they were done properly they would in fact save lives, unfortunately there are too many ways around it. I know for an extra $10 I can get a sticker with no inspection done.
The data supports Caddyman’s assertions, and I happen to subscribe to his beliefs as well, but the debate over the value of safety inspections has been going on for years and is largely a philosophical debate. We have annual inspections in NH and over the years I’ve seen countless perfactly safe vehicle rejected for irregularities having nothing to do with safety, and rarely are these cheap to remedy. Yet I also see countless vehicles rolling down the road with stickers that very clearly are unsafe, with wheels wobbling, bumpers barely held on with hanger wire, fenders taped on with duct tape, leaning so badly that clearly a spring was broken or something of the sort, and all other manner of serious deficiencies.
I myself had a vehicle rejected for an absolutely rediculous reason. I had a small pickup on which I’d added a bumper. The framework was 2x2 steel angle irons and the bumper was a 2x10 carriage-bolted to an angle iron running behind the bumper. The vehicle was rejected because the state regulation says that IF a truck has a wood rear bumper the bumper must be hardwood and backed by a 1/4" x 4’ steel plate. Since NH does not require a pickup to even have a rear bumper, I had the guy cut the bumper off at the mounting bolts, throw it into the bed, and give me a sticker. I then went home and bolted the bumper back on.
The summary is that my experience has been that state safety inspections don’t work, and only become a minor welfare system for small garages, a revenue generator for the states, and an opportunity to steal money for crooked ahops.
I respect the opinion of those who feel otherwise, but cannot agree with them.
Safety inspections were dropped in OK some years ago and good riddance. As a former state inspector my opinion is that they were time wasters and a total joke.
The fact a car passes inspection on a Friday does not mean that it will even come close to passing 3 weeks later, or possibly even the next day.
When the move was afoot to eliminate the state inspections here in OK there was a lot of uproar from the do-gooder groups. There were reports every day on the news that elimination of this program was going to lead to countless thousands of safety defect crashes, thousands more deaths and injuries, etc. It did not happen.
Of course, the state troopers came out in favor of retaining the program. They had just succeeded a couple of years previously in lobbying for the fees to be raised of which a percentage went into their retirement fund…
No doubt they’re concerned with public safety instead of their own pockets.
The same uproar also happened when speed limits were raised from 55 MPH, firearm concealed permits, and laws such as Make My Day and Stand Your Ground were passed. None of the destruction and doom ever came to pass.
I have several friends that have repair facilities (of different types) and all say they loose[sic] money on the inspections
But…it gets customers “in the door.” If you fail because you need brakes, tires, and a new muffler, odds are good you’ll have the work done right there.
I know too many poor and/or dumb people who would drive a tire down to…and through…the cords if they didn’t need to pass inspection.
ciggy, you’re right. We have had this conversation before, but I’ve never seen anyone explain why accident statistics are the same in both states that do inspections and states that don’t do inspections. How do you explain the fact that there are just as many accidents (per capita) in states that conduct inspections as states that don’t conduct inspections?
Caddy and I will never agree on emissions testing, but after considering state-by-state accident statistics, I agree with him on inspections.
If I had time I’d go look at it. There’s a lot that goes into producing those kinds of numbers. And there’s a lot that goes into making solid inferences based on simple numbers like that. (Did you know that ice cream sales and rape rates tend to have a fairly strong positive correlation?) The world is now completely polluted with bad info so at the moment all there is here is a few anecdotes - similar to ones I could give myself.
Since I don’t care enough to spend the time to look I’ll just let you guys have it. Its not up for dispute in my state right now so my opinion on the whole thing pretty much means nothing. If VA puts it up on the block in any given election cycle I’ll wade out into the mess of info and report back.
(I actually find the thing about insurance companies not caring to be most convincing, though that’s another thing I’d want to verify. They are the serious number crunchers of the world).
Unfortunately I am somewhat insatiably curious. And I don’t really have much time for it…but
Caddyman & anyone else who has referred to some simple “the accident rates are no different” or “the data” are clear about it are going to have to provide some sources. B/c there is no simple consensus or clear picture. And frankly, it seems easier to find research that says the opposite.
NH inspections are the way NY was 30+ years ago…It was left up to the individual inspector to determine if the vehicle was safe or not. NY adopted a standardized safety inspection that all inspectors need to follow. A check list of all parts and what is considered safe. And if you pass a vehicle (for you buddy) and that vehicle is in a accident and shown it shouldn’t have passed any inspection you can be held personally liable (I think that was dropped in recent years).
I really wonder how many accidents have occurred due to faulty safety equipment. I suspect it’s very low.
NJ doesn’t inspect cars anymore…
SO ?
( no apostrophe needed in cars, it is plural, not possesive )
Why is it neccessary for the state to baby sit you to have a safe vehicle ?
State inspection or not, this is something every vehicle owner must do anyway.
Minnesota had inspections in the metro areas for a few years then got rid of them. The main benefit was to the companies doing the work and no one else. The last car I saw with a headlight out was a police car. I think they should be doing a daily walk-around. People are quite capable of doing their own inspections.
Yeah and I also had little idea what the poster’s point was.
People are quite capable of doing their own inspections.
I’d say less then 20% have any idea how to check brakes…Most couldn’t even tell you WHERE the brakes are…or the difference between drum, disc, or what ABS is.
cigroller, I found state-by-state traffic fatality rates for 2002 and 2003:
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2003.htm#table-1
Unfortunately, I don’t know which states inspect and which states don’t, outside of Florida, which was not inspecting vehicles during the years these stats cover.
Here are auto insurance rates by state: