NO THANKS OBD III... Seems I will keep my OBD 1-2 vehicles for a LONG TIME thank you very much

Maintenance/Repairs
41

Come on Bloody, the feds never paid for baseball uniforms. Uniforms were either paid by local businesses or local tax payers. There is considerable misunderstandings of what is paid by local taxes, state taxes, federal taxes, and the various fees collected by all along the way. It is the old mantra that more money is needed rather than a focus on priorities. Of course you will find examples either way but in Minnesota far more is paid into the federal system than is sent back.

As in business, one needs to focus on the main priorities and root out all the extraneous stuff with a focus on results. For many federal and state programs, this just is not done until there is a serious money problem, and then they seem to keep the extraneous and throw out the high priorities.

Once again, what in the world is the purpose and results of having annual safety and emissions inspections? Worse, operated by tax dollars? What do they really accomplish except to make people feel good and correct a very small percentage of cars. I could see maybe inspections of ten year old vehicles or later, but what is the point of inspecting one or two year old cars? I ask I ask? Which was precisely why Minnesota did away with it. The results weren’t there.

42

And some in Mississippi appreciate your state’s generousity @Bing. 40% of Mississippi’s budget is charitably donated by Minnesota and a few other generous states.

43
hey were carried out at state-owned facilities that did not do repairs, thus there was no incentive to find problems that didn't exist.

Well, they had no FINANCIAL incentive to fail cars. If you don’t think that inspectors’ “fail rates” weren’t closely watched, and “further instruction” given to the outliers, well, I got a bridge for ya!

44

It’s funny that my conservative business friends love to tell me how that, in their successful businesses, they never “cut their way to profits”. It was always about generating more revenue. Then, when discussing the government, all they wanted to talk about how we need to cut spending and not raise more revenue. This makes no sense to me.

45

You’re welcome Rod but send some of that warm air up here in return.

Yeah we had some misguided managers that would rate supervisors on how many times they would write up employees for infractions. Of course usually make believe infractions. Too few infractions, must not be supervising very hard. Amazing. So when it comes to review time, how will the inspection station managers be reviewed that have a 97% pass rate?? Keep a couple burned out trunk light bulbs in your pocket just in case you need to increase your fail rate. I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where the cookies are hidden.

I think if we really took a hard look at how well inspection improve air quality we would find that other methods have a far greater impact. Things like increasing the turn-over rate of new cars so that more new than old cars are on the roads. Things like increasing the speed limit and reducing road bottle-necks to improve the flow of traffic. Whatever. Some people just feel better having more laws and an aggressive police forces to enforce them.

46

Speaking of state inspections, Tennessee used to have state run safety inspection stations. My sister in law took her car in and it failed. She had a Chevy Caprice that had been rear ended a few months earlier and the body shop inadvertantly installed tail lights from an Impala. The only difference was the logo, and it failed for that reason. She had to have Caprice Classic taillights installed.

I know they were cracking down on people who replaced damaged tail lights with those round tail lights meant for trailers mounted on the bumper, but a logo, seriously.

Now since we are getting off track with the government budget, and I know it is a very complicated issue for which there is no simple answer, I do know of one fundamental flaw that could go a long way to help get it under control. If you have ever worked for any government agency and looked at the annual evaluations of anyone in a management position, you will find that the single most important bullet in their eval is the size of their budget.

Evals go to a board of people who have no idea if the manager under review is doing a good or effective job. According to the evals, all the managers walk on water. So the review board that is looking at making promotions looks at the size of the budget, and the biggest budget gets the promotion. Now you have a government that is mostly good conservative people who want to see the government spend less money and reduce the budget except theirs. See the problem?

47

Well, I’m late to the discussion but can’t resist putting my contribution in. Hard part is keeping it brief, I could go on for pages ranting and raving about privacy issues. I don’t agree with this “if you’re complying with the law you have nothing to worry about” viewpoint. Its a steady encroachment on our privacy and freedom, hardly a day goes by without my hearing about another abuse / violation of privacy. Probably my generation will be the last to understand what freedom and privacy truly are.

Personally, I feel the threat from private industry is worse than that from government. It would be nice if some of the 2nd amendment advocates who are so worried about the government tracking their gun purchases would also start paying attention to what retailers are doing with all the data they are mining with their so-called “loyalty” cards.

With regards to companies like Progressive, Verizon, (and I even got an offer from my AAA affiliate) wanting to install tracking chips in your car; . . . "one who knows all the movements of another person knows everything about that person, whether he/she is a churchgoer (and what specific church/religious group/etc) where one works, where one shops, eats, whether and how often one goes to bars/strip clubs/betting parlors; all political / civic groups one belongs to. . . " That’s a paraphrase from a Federal judge’s statement in a case regarding whether police needed a warrant to place a tracking ‘bug’ on a suspect’s car, from an article I read in USA Today, I don’t quite remember the exact quote. . .

The . . . "if you’re not breaking the law you have nothing to worry about. . . " argument reminds me of what Benjamin Franklin said about giving up essential liberties in exchange for temporary safety.

If you want to read a truly scary article about privacy violation, although only tangentially related to cars, check out the article that begins on page 40 of the February 2016 issue of Consumer Reports about facial recognition technology.

I hate to say it, but I’ll probably spend my final days in a bunker somewhere full of freeze dried food, bottled water, and guns shaking one angry fist at a world I just can’t comprehend anymore.

I agree cities (major metropolitan areas) are becoming unlivable. Too much regulation, heavy-handed policing, crime, violence, drugs, gangs, blight, cameras EVERYwhere, . . . I’d like to move way way out in the sticks myself. As long as I’m within an hour’s DRIVE of a Wal-Mart and a really good Chinese Buffet I’ll be just fine, EXCEPT, I learned from watching my Mom’s situation, when you get old you want to be near to a good hospital. I saw many people in her retirement community, including my Mom, who had medical emergencies, who got to live and return home and live for many years afterwards simply because the retirement community she lived in was less than a 3 minute ambulance ride from a major full-service hospital. Those people would have been “found dead” a month later had they been living “out-in-the-sticks”.

48

I know Verizon has been heavily advertising their “hum” tracking chip heavily around here, playing a muzak version of "Ridin’ along in my automobile. . . . " I received a similar “offer” from AAA about a year or so ago. Want to charge me $9.99 a month for the privilege of violating me. . . isn’t that like asking the prostitute to pay YOU for her services??? I sent them an angry letter in response but never heard back (obviously). I know its like urinating in the ocean, but until the 1st amendment gets repealed, I will continue to speak out wherever I can.

The really sad part is that so many “sheeple” will just passively go along with this kind of thing. This country doesn’t seem to have a critical mass of people capable of critical thinking skills anymore, so people just blow along in the wind at the whims of the advertising and marketing people. . . What a shame. How about a store where you get clamped at the ankles when you enter, and held upside down and shaken until all your money / credit cards fall out of you, then you get slam dunked head first into the dumpster behind the store. . . I’m sure the marketing folks can figure out a way to convince people its in their best interest to go there. . …

49

Maybe a disclaimer every time you use your debit card. Instead of do you want cash back? No. It could be do you want your information stored? No and H No, and then leave me along No.

It is interesting though that I went to the store and used my debit card, then for some reason a few minutes later went on-line to check my account. The charge was already on it and deducted. Kinda scary. No waiting three days anymore for a check to clear.

50

Bing - where the heck have you been ? The electronic transactions have been almost instant for some time. Even the hand written checks go through a scanner and do the same thing.

51

@Bing writes …

Well they can do that (DUI roadblocks) because driving is not a right but a privilege. So you have no right to be on the highway and subject to local laws.

Apparently you are correct Bing, b/c here in Calif this is a common thing we drivers face all the time, roadblocks set up blocking all cars for no other reason other than a driver might be violating the law somehow or the other. And they want to stop everybody to check them out. A couple of months ago I was taking a neighborhood walk at night, saw a long line of lights in one of the city’s major streets about a mile away, so got curious what was the cause of the back-up. When I got there, could see they had set up one of these dui/etc roadblocks, and the cars on that street were being held in a long line for 15-20 minutes. One woman who’s car got trapped in the line had to go to the bathroom so bad she couldn’t wait and had to exit the car and do her business behind some bushes in the median strip.

52

If everyone is stopped, accusations of profiling are meaningless. It is also much more likely to find DUI problems since you have to be way past the limit to drive erratically enough to attract attention.

53

I m with you Ed Frugal.

essential liberty TRUMPS temporary safety everytime.

they can pry my old ford from my cold dead fingers…, I really need to get that pc of lead to shield my ignition box…

I have an extra ford if you have extra room in your bunker…

54

My memory is a little foggy but this was litigated in Minnesota some years ago. I think the thing is they can’t randomly stop someone without cause but they can stop everyone in a road block because its not discriminating or profiling. So like the highway patrolman that stopped a car coming up from Texas with close to a million in drugs, he was stopped because he had one of those crystals hanging from his mirror. Heh heh. If you’re hauling drugs with out of state plates on the interstate, for heaven’s sake keep the speed limit, and keep the pom poms off the windshield.

Just got back from the store and the local police had pulled a guy over going the wrong way heading to the interstate. Must have just been confused since they didn’t tow his car, so my support is with the police. Right place, right time, and probably saved someone’s life. Still if they were profiling short, old, white guys, driving Pontiacs, I may not be so supportive. The golden mean with everything I guess, but I learned long ago to go to the bathroom before driving or getting on an elevator.

55

So look, don’t use credit cards, don’t use ATM’s, don’t buy anything online, don’t register yourself on Cartalk.com, don’t use Google maps, don’t use a Fastrak toll device, don’t drive through a toll booth, don’t show your face in public, don’t ever use voice over internet telephone service, don’t have a bank account that you access online, pay all your bills in cash, file your taxes on paper, by mail. Disconnect your telephone, your water service. Turn off your voice recognition service on everything. No cable TV, no internet. No subscriptions.

I think if you are a short, fat, white guy driving an old Pontiac you might be ignored for a while. If that’s your goal in life, rock on.

56

In high school there was a local cop who targeted students. His mo was pull you over, you have a burnt out tail light, of course it was never burnt out after the stop, then would proceed to “mind if I search your car?” I did not know how to say no, once he even pulled the spare in the trunk to look underneath. Bud had his pot in a box on the back seat marked dope box, and the officer did not even look in it!

57

possession is only a 100 dollar ticket (civil) in DE now.

58

I noticed that the original posted link was to an article that is nearly four years old. If this were imminent back then, wouldn’t it have happened by now?

59

See my previous post, essence is the technology is there, enforcement and laws are up to our elected officials. vote for a candidate that supports your ideals.

60

Police do enforcement with special instructions from the executive authority. Congress enacts laws. If that is what you meant, then we are on the same page, @Barkydog.