… can be pretty steep.
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I don’t think of fines or jail time as the ultimate price for breaking the law. A well deserved penalty in this case, I’ll agree. Off with his head is more like the ultimate price, IMO. If you are channeling your inner JT bombast, then go @VDCdriver!
ultimate would be death. in my world
I used the word “ultimate” in the sense of “maximum”, which is one of the meanings of “ultimate”.
Somehow, I doubt that capital punishment is prescribed by law for this type of offense, and–more than likely–his 5 year prison sentence is the maximum that is permissible under the law for that type of offense.
Keep in mind that this was an emissions inspector accused of allowing non-compliant vehicles to pass. The penalties for an end-user who has installed “mods” on their car to get it to pass are nowhere near this severe.
Pardon me for my snicker but I just had the vision of the GRU at work. “What ya in fo boy?” “Bad exhaust”.
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There’s definitely a conflict of interest involved in the emissions testing business. I expect emissions testing fraud happens all the time with no consequences other than the lightening & fattening of the various folk’s involved wallets. To prevent emissions testing fraud would required the state hiring thousands of emissions-testing–shoppers using thousands of cars with known emission levels, and offering up “rewards” of some kind to the tester for a pass. Not gonna happen, not enough state resources.
Minnesota got rid of emissions testing under the upstart wrestler governor. He said the only ones benefiting from the testing were the testers. He was right and had the guts to deep six the whole program before it could grow beyond metro testing.
You are giving credit to the wrong office, your clean air is result of the increasing federal vehicle emissions standards. If those Minnesota cities still had air pollution that exceeded the federal limit, action would be required by the local communities where the pollution is failing. This would involve a reduction in vehicle pollution or industrial air pollution.
It sounds like you have never been involved with the vehicle emissions testing program in you state. Our emissions testing department has been sending out covert vehicles for testing for more than 30 years. If you were an inspector you would be aware of this situation. The difficulty in early years is that they did not have the authority to assess penalties to inspectors, some inspectors made a lot of money passing cars that fail.
We don’t have a prooblem with this type of cheating in MD. The test stations are owned by the state and the workers are on a contract.
That’s the way that NJ does it also.
Emissions Testing at the state-owned facilities is included in the price of one’s registration fee. There are also a few private facilities to which one can go–for a steep fee–and now I think we know why people might choose to pay a private facility, rather than getting the service without extra cost at the state-owned facility.
Um, wasn’t the guy from New Jersey? I submit that just because the stations are state owned and run doesn’t mean that a customer can’t slip the operator a few bucks to pass his car. What it does mean though is that the state has a bureaucratic interest in keeping the system going and even expanding it. It’s one of the key rules that programs continue to expand unless stopped and there will always be good arguments made for expansion and much gnashing of teeth when they are cut back. That’s just the way it is.
Offering up a reward to pass a car would be entrapment, I think, but I do know that CA does send out “tampered” cars–cars that have had some sort of intentional modification or non-compliant parts installed–that would still pass a tailpipe test to test facilities. When that happened at a shop I worked at, the result was a fine for the business, a fine for the mechanic, and a mandatory refresher course for the mechanic.
The operator doesn’t determine if the car passes or fails, it’s all programmed into the system. All they do is connect stuff up, push start, and hand the owner the report. How can they mess with that?
I dunno, but how did the guy from Hoboken do it for his five year jail sentence?
The vehicle inspector does have to input certain data
Does the vehicle have aftermarket emissions parts that are not permitted for the car
Is there a fuel leak?
Is there blue smoke belching out of the exhaust?
Is the exhaust manifold cracked?
And those were just some obvious examples
Depending on the answers, the car will fail or pass
You need to re-read exactly what I stated. Yes, they are state-owned, but they are run by a private contractor who was cherry-picked by our esteemed former Governor, Christine Todd Whitman. The facilities are run by Parsons Technologies, and ever since Chrissy-Baby gave them that sweetheart deal, everything has become loosey-goosey.
The 3 times I have failed my emissions test not only have been fair cops but pointed me to repairs I needed to make that benefited me more than the price of the test, not to mention the value of cleaner air.
How many covert cars were sent to check the emissions-testing facilities in Nevada last year? And how many tests did they do w/these covert cars?