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Why should that be required? Let people do as they will and impose penalties for problematic behavior (including negligence). I lived in a state with safety ins

Why should that be required? Let people do as they will and impose penalties for problematic behavior (including negligence). I lived in a state with safety inspections and AFAICT it was little more than yet another disproportionate speed bump for the poor and a complete waste of time for society at large. I do see the merit of inspecting larger trailers (such as for boats) once a year given the combined increased likelihood of incompetence and risk to life when things go wrong. But even then I think it doesn't actually accomplish much in practice. The time and effort would be better spent on targeted public education campaigns, possibly mandatory. For emissions, again who cares. Regulations imposed on the high volume manufacturers broadly solves all the issues that are easy to solve. The rest are either willful violations or collectors. The latter is technological in nature and inevitably gets grandfathered for both safety and emissions everywhere I've lived.

Retric 6mo ago
For emissions there is often nothing visually wrong with the car. So you’d essentially be giving up on enforcement if you didn’t require everyone to get their car checked at least every few years. Doing it every year is IMO overkill. As to safety inspections it’s not a very large effect, but they do save lives and the expense is generally rather small. Yes it impacts the poor more, but that’s because getting unsafe vehicles fixed or off the road is kind of the point.
- retatop 6mo ago
  I have never met anyone who properly fixed an emissions problem, and I think that's what GP meant by willful violations. Any car old enough to have emissions problems isn't worth enough to fix properly, so you cheat it by doing things like buying a spacer for the O2 sensor. Personally I'd be shocked if emissions inspections had a significant effect on total vehicle emissions, and I think that the most effective things are done at the manufacturer
  - inquist 6mo ago
    I'm just one person, but I replaced the catalytic converters on my FJ Cruiser so it would pass the emissions test
    - normie3000 6mo ago
      How old was the car? Was the old one faulty? Thinking of getting an FJ but not sure the thought is coming from a sensible place.
  - Retric 6mo ago
    I can personally name 3 people who had their catalytic converter replaced to pass an emissions inspection. Trying to cheat the system when they stick a hose on your tailpipe and test the emissions isn’t trivial.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  > So you’d essentially be giving up on enforcement Yes, that is precisely what I was suggesting. At least in the general case. Spot enforcement of notable cases when witnessed (such as the aforementioned coal rolling) seems like a good idea to me. It comes down to the cost benefit tradeoff. Most cars will be used as sold, will be kept in good repair, and will eventually be scrapped due to a failure unrelated to the emissions system. I'm entirely unconvinced that regular testing leads to an overall improvement large enough to matter assuming sufficient requirements were imposed on the vehicle at the time of manufacture. > it impacts the poor more, but that’s because getting unsafe vehicles fixed or off the road is kind of the point. That's not what I meant. Try getting a safety inspection in a poor neighborhood. The places are booked out and you probably can't afford the time off work even once you do manage to reserve a slot. Or you end up waiting in line for a few hours. At least that was my experience. On top of that I doubt it catches many worthwhile violations. People are quite good at looking out for their own lives and pocketbooks. And again there's spot enforcement. I've lived in states without safety inspections and never felt unsafe. The police would issue "fix it" tickets if they saw anything they thought was truly unsafe after which it was on you to sort it out with the court.
  - Retric 6mo ago
    > I'm entirely unconvinced that regular testing leads to an overall improvement large enough to matter assuming sufficient requirements were imposed on the vehicle at the time of manufacture. Only ~95% of cars pass emissions tests last year (it varies by state). As each car is tested several times over its lifespan you’ll find the majority of IC cars eventually need something fixed to reduce smog. This isn’t some wildly inefficient system it’s actually quite effective at improving air quality.
    - temp8830 6mo ago
      But that's 95% of cars that didn't need to be tested. All that the testing requirement does is reinforce the (correct) public's perception that it's a free money scheme. If the "check engine" light is not on in a modern car it's pretty much good to go. When cars do need an emissions related fix, it's almost always that little charcoal canister that people flood with gas because nobody told them why it's a bad idea to top off the tank after the first click.
ajsnigrutin 6mo ago
I live in a country with mandatory (mostly-)yearly car inspections (and all other motor vehicles). Many time you don't even know that there's an issue and they only find it during the inspection. Handbrake works only on one side, normal brakes don't work properly on one of the wheels, there's play in one of the joints or tie rods, etc. You park, pull the handbrake, you have no idea that if you parked on an incline, your car would roll downhill, but because they noticed it during an inspection, you get that fixed. At the same time, you're forced to replace all the blown lightbulbs etc., even the ones not used daily (fog lights, etc.), since they check those too. Many people don't even notice their brake lights not working.
- normie3000 6mo ago
  I was sold incorrect tyres once, picked up in the inspection. Why wouldn't I want to know?
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  And yet somehow in the US states that don't have inspections things keep working. It's not as though we don't have statistics regarding the causes of traffic incidents.
  - marysol5 6mo ago
    "Keep working", or people get injured, or die at higher rates due to faulty vehicles on the road. US road infrastructure is pretty bad at the best of times, highways are devoid of safety and notification systems. Hence why MASSIVE pile ups are a thing
  - tpm 6mo ago
    There is a world of difference between keeping working and working safely. I don't know about technical and emmission inspections in the US but in our country they also check stuff like properly aligned headlights so you don't blind other cars, the brakes, geometry etc., and I'm pretty sure without those check the cars would drive on the roads and cause safety issues. > For emissions, again who cares. Well for example removing a DPF from a diesel car which was popular sport for a time and driving such a car in a densely populated area can be considered directly causing cancer, so a lot of people care about this. And only spot checking for this is ineffective and expensive, though it is done in some countries anyway (Austria I think?).
Spooky23 6mo ago
I’d disagree. It keeps cars with bald tires, faulty brakes and other defects off the road. Poor people who can’t afford these things shouldn’t be driving the cars. Motor carriers have a totally different regulatory regime that has a direct influence on highway safety. The issues there are due to the varying jurisdictions.
kube-system 6mo ago
The volume of incidents on the road make it entirely impossible to practically hold people accountable in that way. If you are rear ended at a stop light because someone behind you had faulty tires or brakes, nobody is disassembling the car to try to prove negligence. If the incident was serious enough that the police even respond, the last thing they’re going to be doing on scene is measuring your brake pads.
Tangurena2 6mo ago
> For emissions, again who cares. Most cars do indeed meet emissions regulations. From the essay Million Dollar Murray [0]: > In Denver, five per cent of the vehicles on the road produce fifty-five per cent of the automobile pollution. > Stedman is a chemist and automobile emissions specialist at the University of Denver. His laboratory put up the sign on Speer Avenue. “Obviously, the older a car is the more likely it is to become broken. It’s the same as human beings. And by broken we mean any number of mechanical malfunctions—the computer’s not working anymore, fuel injection is stuck open, the catalyst died. It’s not unusual that these failure modes result in high emissions. We have at least one car in our database which was emitting seventy grams of hydrocarbon per mile, which means that you could almost drive a Honda Civic on the exhaust fumes from that car. It’s not just old cars. It’s new cars with high mileage, like taxis. One of the most successful and least publicized control measures was done by a district attorney in L.A. back in the nineties. He went to LAX and discovered that all of the Bell Cabs were gross emitters. One of those cabs emitted more than its own weight of pollution every year.” When I moved to Denver, there were inspections (I think annually). Later, they were eliminated and now there are remote sensors set up along side various onramps. The main sensor is on one side, a box about the size of a suitcase, and the other side is a mirror, since the sensor aims a laser and measures the absorption lines of what comes out of the exhaust (and takes a photo of your license plate). If your car is a gross polluter, you get a letter from the DMV telling you to get it checked. Anecdotally, I used to have a late 80s Geo Spectrum. When it failed emissions, after attempting to repair it, it turned out that the reason the oxygen sensor failed was due to a crack in the exhaust manifold. The way the engine was arranged, if left untreated, the crack in the manifold would direct exhaust gases into the radiator which is why there were so many engine fires (resulting in a total loss of the vehicle). Notes: 0 - Written by Malcolm Gladwell, this essay is about "power law distributions", where a few percent produce wildly different results: https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Million-Dollar-Murray.pdf https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mill...

Retric 6mo ago

For emissions there is often nothing visually wrong with the car. So you’d essentially be giving up on enforcement if you didn’t require everyone to get their car checked at least every few years. Doing it every year is IMO overkill. As to safety inspections it’s not a very large effect, but they do save lives and the expense is generally rather small. Yes it impacts the poor more, but that’s because getting unsafe vehicles fixed or off the road is kind of the point.

retatop 6mo ago
I have never met anyone who properly fixed an emissions problem, and I think that's what GP meant by willful violations. Any car old enough to have emissions problems isn't worth enough to fix properly, so you cheat it by doing things like buying a spacer for the O2 sensor. Personally I'd be shocked if emissions inspections had a significant effect on total vehicle emissions, and I think that the most effective things are done at the manufacturer
- inquist 6mo ago
  I'm just one person, but I replaced the catalytic converters on my FJ Cruiser so it would pass the emissions test
  - normie3000 6mo ago
    How old was the car? Was the old one faulty? Thinking of getting an FJ but not sure the thought is coming from a sensible place.
- Retric 6mo ago
  I can personally name 3 people who had their catalytic converter replaced to pass an emissions inspection. Trying to cheat the system when they stick a hose on your tailpipe and test the emissions isn’t trivial.
fc417fc802 6mo ago
> So you’d essentially be giving up on enforcement Yes, that is precisely what I was suggesting. At least in the general case. Spot enforcement of notable cases when witnessed (such as the aforementioned coal rolling) seems like a good idea to me. It comes down to the cost benefit tradeoff. Most cars will be used as sold, will be kept in good repair, and will eventually be scrapped due to a failure unrelated to the emissions system. I'm entirely unconvinced that regular testing leads to an overall improvement large enough to matter assuming sufficient requirements were imposed on the vehicle at the time of manufacture. > it impacts the poor more, but that’s because getting unsafe vehicles fixed or off the road is kind of the point. That's not what I meant. Try getting a safety inspection in a poor neighborhood. The places are booked out and you probably can't afford the time off work even once you do manage to reserve a slot. Or you end up waiting in line for a few hours. At least that was my experience. On top of that I doubt it catches many worthwhile violations. People are quite good at looking out for their own lives and pocketbooks. And again there's spot enforcement. I've lived in states without safety inspections and never felt unsafe. The police would issue "fix it" tickets if they saw anything they thought was truly unsafe after which it was on you to sort it out with the court.
- Retric 6mo ago
  > I'm entirely unconvinced that regular testing leads to an overall improvement large enough to matter assuming sufficient requirements were imposed on the vehicle at the time of manufacture. Only ~95% of cars pass emissions tests last year (it varies by state). As each car is tested several times over its lifespan you’ll find the majority of IC cars eventually need something fixed to reduce smog. This isn’t some wildly inefficient system it’s actually quite effective at improving air quality.
  - temp8830 6mo ago
    But that's 95% of cars that didn't need to be tested. All that the testing requirement does is reinforce the (correct) public's perception that it's a free money scheme. If the "check engine" light is not on in a modern car it's pretty much good to go. When cars do need an emissions related fix, it's almost always that little charcoal canister that people flood with gas because nobody told them why it's a bad idea to top off the tank after the first click.

ajsnigrutin 6mo ago

I live in a country with mandatory (mostly-)yearly car inspections (and all other motor vehicles). Many time you don't even know that there's an issue and they only find it during the inspection. Handbrake works only on one side, normal brakes don't work properly on one of the wheels, there's play in one of the joints or tie rods, etc. You park, pull the handbrake, you have no idea that if you parked on an incline, your car would roll downhill, but because they noticed it during an inspection, you get that fixed. At the same time, you're forced to replace all the blown lightbulbs etc., even the ones not used daily (fog lights, etc.), since they check those too. Many people don't even notice their brake lights not working.

normie3000 6mo ago
I was sold incorrect tyres once, picked up in the inspection. Why wouldn't I want to know?
fc417fc802 6mo ago
And yet somehow in the US states that don't have inspections things keep working. It's not as though we don't have statistics regarding the causes of traffic incidents.
- marysol5 6mo ago
  "Keep working", or people get injured, or die at higher rates due to faulty vehicles on the road. US road infrastructure is pretty bad at the best of times, highways are devoid of safety and notification systems. Hence why MASSIVE pile ups are a thing
- tpm 6mo ago
  There is a world of difference between keeping working and working safely. I don't know about technical and emmission inspections in the US but in our country they also check stuff like properly aligned headlights so you don't blind other cars, the brakes, geometry etc., and I'm pretty sure without those check the cars would drive on the roads and cause safety issues. > For emissions, again who cares. Well for example removing a DPF from a diesel car which was popular sport for a time and driving such a car in a densely populated area can be considered directly causing cancer, so a lot of people care about this. And only spot checking for this is ineffective and expensive, though it is done in some countries anyway (Austria I think?).

Spooky23 6mo ago

I’d disagree. It keeps cars with bald tires, faulty brakes and other defects off the road. Poor people who can’t afford these things shouldn’t be driving the cars. Motor carriers have a totally different regulatory regime that has a direct influence on highway safety. The issues there are due to the varying jurisdictions.

kube-system 6mo ago

The volume of incidents on the road make it entirely impossible to practically hold people accountable in that way. If you are rear ended at a stop light because someone behind you had faulty tires or brakes, nobody is disassembling the car to try to prove negligence. If the incident was serious enough that the police even respond, the last thing they’re going to be doing on scene is measuring your brake pads.

Tangurena2 6mo ago

> For emissions, again who cares. Most cars do indeed meet emissions regulations. From the essay Million Dollar Murray [0]: > In Denver, five per cent of the vehicles on the road produce fifty-five per cent of the automobile pollution. > Stedman is a chemist and automobile emissions specialist at the University of Denver. His laboratory put up the sign on Speer Avenue. “Obviously, the older a car is the more likely it is to become broken. It’s the same as human beings. And by broken we mean any number of mechanical malfunctions—the computer’s not working anymore, fuel injection is stuck open, the catalyst died. It’s not unusual that these failure modes result in high emissions. We have at least one car in our database which was emitting seventy grams of hydrocarbon per mile, which means that you could almost drive a Honda Civic on the exhaust fumes from that car. It’s not just old cars. It’s new cars with high mileage, like taxis. One of the most successful and least publicized control measures was done by a district attorney in L.A. back in the nineties. He went to LAX and discovered that all of the Bell Cabs were gross emitters. One of those cabs emitted more than its own weight of pollution every year.” When I moved to Denver, there were inspections (I think annually). Later, they were eliminated and now there are remote sensors set up along side various onramps. The main sensor is on one side, a box about the size of a suitcase, and the other side is a mirror, since the sensor aims a laser and measures the absorption lines of what comes out of the exhaust (and takes a photo of your license plate). If your car is a gross polluter, you get a letter from the DMV telling you to get it checked. Anecdotally, I used to have a late 80s Geo Spectrum. When it failed emissions, after attempting to repair it, it turned out that the reason the oxygen sensor failed was due to a crack in the exhaust manifold. The way the engine was arranged, if left untreated, the crack in the manifold would direct exhaust gases into the radiator which is why there were so many engine fires (resulting in a total loss of the vehicle). Notes: 0 - Written by Malcolm Gladwell, this essay is about "power law distributions", where a few percent produce wildly different results: https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Million-Dollar-Murray.pdf https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mill...