The Vehicle Safety Inspection (or Not) Thread

[Diggin It]

My beef with state mandated vehicle safety inspections is that they are often farmed out to businesses out to make a profit which they do by making the repairs, needed or not. I'd prefer that any inspections be done at states facilities who have no profit motive. But then people would gripe about 'big government', so ....

 

[DMax82]

I'm not familiar with these. In Tennessee we just have a yearly emissions test in some counties. So you show up yearly and they tell you what is supposedly wrong, then they fix it for you, at a price? Yeah, that does sound like a racket. I can only imagine if this was farmed out to the crooks at Firestone LOL.

 

[Jstpssng]

Good call, Diggin It. There's no sense getting a thread shut down the week before it turns 6 years old.

To all of the people opposed to state inspections; how about some suggestions for other ways to ensure that people try to keep their vehicles safe?
I asked several times in the other thread if motor vehicle owners in states without inspections are still expected to keep their vehicles safe; yet the sound of crickets is deafening.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Well for starters, make any fines NOT benefit the Government. I bet, if you made people go to seat belt class, at the expense of the Government instead of a fine, the Government would strangely consider the matter not such a public safety issue any longer.

 

[LD48750]

Good call, Diggin It. There's no sense getting a thread shut down the week before it turns 6 years old.

To all of the people opposed to state inspections; how about some suggestions for other ways to ensure that people try to keep their vehicles safe?
I asked several times in the other thread if motor vehicle owners in states without inspections are still expected to keep their vehicles safe; yet the sound of crickets is deafening.

And that's because none are needed.
The states without inspections do not seem to be any more dangerous then the ones with inspections.

If you can't show statistical evidence that the inspections actually make the hyways safer, why force people to spend the time & money to comply?

 

[Jstpssng]

And that's because none are needed.
The states without inspections do not seem to be any more dangerous then the ones with inspections.

If you can't show statistical evidence that the inspections actually make the hyways safer, why force people to spend the time & money to comply?

There is no evidence because cause isn't collected at accident scenes, as pointed out in the link which I both quoted and provided. Are you saying that everybody does the proper maintenance on their vehicles, and nobody is driving around with bad brakes, inadequate tires, sloppy front ends, no taillights?

 

[Diggin It]

To all of the people opposed to state inspections; how about some suggestions for other ways to ensure that people try to keep their vehicles safe?

Equipment violation citations. Once cited by an officer, the vehicle owner has X days to have it repaired and inspected by the Officer again. They could do the repair themselves or have a shop of their choice do it. No private shops to do the inspections and charge for repairs on site.

Well for starters, make any fines NOT benefit the Government. I bet, if you made people go to seat belt class, at the expense of the Government instead of a fine, the Government would strangely consider the matter not such a public safety issue any longer.

Most similar laws are nothing but money grabs. This one in particular was heavily lobbied for by insurance companies and it got the the point the US DOT was essentially blackmailing states to comply or highway funds would be witheld.

 

[Jstpssng]

Equipment violation citations. Once cited by an officer, the vehicle owner has X days to have it repaired and inspected by the Officer again. They could do the repair themselves or have a shop of their choice do it. No private shops to do the inspections and charge for repairs on site.




Most similar laws are nothing but money grabs. This one in particular was heavily lobbied for by insurance companies and it got the the point the US DOT was essentially blackmailing states to comply or highway funds would be witheld.

We already have that, if an officer observes a defect we are issued a "defect card" and have 3 days to get it fixed and signed not by the officer but by an authorized inspection station. I don't know how much followup there is though.

Bringing my comment from the other thread over;

This isn't a unique discussion; this 2015 article discusses the pros and cons. A couple of highlights;

That doesn't mean that inspections do not help, the GAO says. Their effectiveness is hard to measure because of a lack of national data on crashes, and because police have little time to investigate whether safety problems contributed to an accident.

and

Dougall argued, as the GAO report says, that few crashes are reported caused by equipment failures, and he wanted to use money saved by eliminating the program to hire more Highway Patrol officers to better enforce driving laws. Others argued halting inspections would compromise safety.

 

[Diggin It]

Determining whether or not defective or unsafe equipment caused an accident after the fact often requires an Accident Reconstructionist. That's a highly specialized officer who is usually only used in fatal accidents due to the high costs and labor intensive processes involved. And even then, they can't always positively confirm or refute whether defective equipment caused it or some other factor such as bad driving or fatigue.

 

[4570Man]

“State facilities with no profit motive” Are you putting unicorn dust in your coffee?