In many states, cars have to be inspected every year. Almost every repair shop will do a state inspection for you. I see this as a major conflict of interest. If they say a car failed the inspection, they can then sell you anything they feel like. It is an answer that is far too easy to get paid for.
I think we should separate them. There should be inspection stations, that only do inspections, and write lists of any needed work, and the customer can take the car to the shop of their choice to have it fixed.
You’re free to have your car fixed anywhere you please. You just have to pay to have it re-inspected. At least, that’s the way it is in California.
California only does smog but they do have Test Only stations. Gold Shield Stations can do tests and repairs.
I think that any state that doesn’t at least have a safety inspection each year is a poorly run state, where I’d rather not drive at all.
In Texas, you can usually take your vehicle to a place that does only oil changes and inspections. I once worked at one of these as an inspector. The only thing they might push on you is an overpriced set of wiper blades. I don’t like installing wiper blades, so I didn’t even do that. If you failed the safety inspection because of your blades, I told you why you failed. If you wanted to buy blades from us and install them yourself, go ahead. They had 15 days to replace their blades elsewhere if they didn’t want to buy them.
I had an uncle who ran a station that only did inspections. Since it didn’t make the money that he hoped it would, he sold stickers without the car having to pass those pesky inspections. The thing that caught him was the same thing that catches the inspectors who don’t actually do a safety inspection, or don’t do a thorough one, or the ones that will make up things that they need to fix: a statewide set of investigators.
So, I think this regulation is not necessary, and it would likely increase the number of false inspection stickers running around. In Texas, you don’t have to get your car repaired where it was inspected, and you can already report anyone who you think is running their inspections as something other than 100% by the book. If they’re found to be screwing around, they’ll get their license yanked.
I don’t know any state that doesn’t allow you to have the repairs done somewhere else.
A long time ago I knew a young woman who took her car in for inspection in PA. She was told she needed new brakes, and paid them to do the work. But someone reminded her that the brakes had been redone not long before hand. She contacted the state, they sent someone out to the shop with her posing as her father. He asked to see the old brakes and they brought out some brakes from another car entirely, the guy from the state went over to the front window and grabbed their state inspection sign with the ID number on it and told them they wouldn’t be doing any inspections for a while. There’s room for abuse in the process, but not many shops would want to do inspections for the minimal fee the state mandates if it didn’t generate additional work for them, and they might not even pay close attention if they don’t think they’ll be seeing the customer again.
Oh, and I missed the edit window, but:
On a late model car in Texas, 90% of the emissions test involves plugging a scanner into the OBDII port, and the other 10% is seeing if the gas cap leaks. If the car doesn’t report back an emissions-related code or that it doesn’t have enough data: you pass. So, if your car thinks it passes the test, it does. If the ECU had detected a emissions problem, you would have a check engine light. You can check those codes yourself and a lot of auto parts stores will do it for you (they wanna sell parts!). So, this is even less of a problem as time goes on.
I’m the opposite, I think the whole inspection thing is a pain in the neck for me, and probably lobbied for by the people who run gas stations and repair shops. I grew up and learned to drive in Washington; they don’t (or didn’t, when I lived there) have inspections except for emissions tests in certain counties. I’m now in Massachusetts, where it’s a state inspection every year. Apart from the inconvenience and expense, I don’t notice any difference. It’s not like the cars in Washington were bursting into flames, losing their wheels, or whatever else the Massachusetts inspections are supposed to prevent.
You never saw the horrors that I drove and failed. Work as a state inspector for a short time, and you’ll see: tires with dry rot and the cords showing, cars that can’t stop from 30mph in any reasonable amount of time, bad wipers, no wipers, gas leaks. I could go on for awhile, and I only inspected cars for a year.
If you want to be on the road with those death traps, I don’t know what I can do for you.
Yeah, I have seen death traps from states that don’t have yearly inspections, and some that never have any inspections at all. They are allowed to drive any old shit. We have a lot of laws here in NYS but on the whole I am grateful for the car ones.
I had the opposite problem, my trusted mechanic was over the state line, so when having problems getting inspected ( that check engine light), it was a lot more hassle then if I could get it done at one place.
And I’ve also noticed some places will really try to get you passed if your car is boarderline in throwing the check engine light.
Well, depending on how far they go, that’s not really crossing the line. An engine that throws a CEL may not ever throw that code again. If they just clear it, and tell you to drive for a hundred miles or so and see if it passes, that’s probably how it should work. If the car actually has a problem, the CEL will usually return quickly.
Now, to back the OP a little, around the time my uncle was caught, Texas still had headlight alignment as part of the safety inspection. Lots of inspectors would claim that your headlights were out of alignment, and charge you to adjust the headlights. I imagine if he was willing to hand out stickers without seeing the car, he was probably doing unnecessary headlight adjustments, too.
It became such a problem that Texas’ response to this was to stop testing the headlight alignment. This is less of a problem now, with more cars either having self adjusting alignment, or having the whole assembly more likely to fail completely when whacked. But at the time, the number of cockeyed oncoming headlights that would would blind me made me hate the Texas legislature with a passion. They’ve given me many more reasons to hate them since then, but I will never forget that one.
I’m not saying that the OP’s solution is just as bad as that one, but I think it’s going a bit far. I’d rather keep inspections in Texas convenient, and just bust the operators that see it as a cash cow. The inspection price and how it’s divided between the state and station is set by law. My boss made good money (hey, more profitable than oil changes) off inspections already, and didn’t push me to sell wipers (though he did push them when I did not think them necessary). He was eager to hire me because I could pass the inspector test, and was sad to run me off by pressuring me to pass cars that would have otherwise failed for “good customers”.
In New Jersey there were state inspection stations, free, which did checks only. But if you fail, it is far simpler to take it to a place where they can fix and then re-inspect it, so you don’t have to wander around until the repair is right.
As mentioned in California it is smog only, and with my Prius I don’t even have to do that. (Worth more than the fuel savings!) The only major mechanical problems I’ve noticed in other cars is the nut behind the wheel.
Do they still do random roadside inspections?
One way to combat this would be to require any related repairs to be included on the inspection report and have the report computerized and sent to the state. That would allow the state to identify inspection stations which are doing excessive repairs and may be scamming their customers.
I usually take my car my trusted mechanic rather than some standalone inspection place just for this reason. They are less likely to scam me and if work is needed, I can trust that they’ll do it right.
Before dropping a car off for PA state inspection I always check all the light bulbs on the vehicle, because shops charge more than I’d like to pay for changing a bulb.
If, as happened once, I see that all my bulbs are fine and then get charged $25 parts/labor for a burned out bulb, I never go to that shop again.
Review sites like Yelp can also help you avoid shady inspection places.
I’m pretty sure that a gas cap leak would trigger an evaporator system trouble code. Most jurisdictions AFAIK now use the OBD II system for emissions testing because it’s pretty thorough and secure. There are so many systems constantly being monitored in a modern car that it’s hard to imagine a realistic scenario where a car is belching fumes but isn’t throwing any trouble codes!
The systems I’m familiar with are entirely computerized and automatically send the test results to the DMV. There are all kinds of safeguards that basically make it impossible to cheat, either to pass a defective car or claim you need repairs that you really don’t. I like it.
Well, I generally agree with you. However, I know of modifications to cars that will defeat the safeguards on cars under this regime. The number of people that will employ them is small, as it usually requires physical modifications to both trigger and alleviate the trouble code. It kind of chaps my ass on principle, but the net effect is small.
I’ve not seen or read about any for years. All the cops on the side of the road seem to be enforcing cellphone/texting laws or carpool laws.
Well, from Texas that limits you to driving to Louisiana and Mississippi then. But there are 14 others you can fly to and then rent a car.
17 states have a periodic (annual or biennial) safety inspection program