“Safe” Today . . . But How About Next Month?

This is what I fear is not being learned by enough drivers today.

They are taught that when something may be wrong, an idiot light will flash to warn them of the impending danger. Unfortunately, that warning is too often ignored. People HAVE gotten lazy about checking routine items about their vehicles.

In line with these government-mandated vehicular warning accessories, I also think overall knowledge of the functions of different parts of the vehicle are to blame. I remember looking at a vehicle purchase this past year (the vehicle manufacturer shall remain nameless) and noticing the lack of a spare tire and jack. When I commented on this to the salesman, the response was, “If you get a flat tire, just call a tow truck. You do have roadside service, right?” Well, yeah, but I also have the skill to change a tire without power tools in under 10 minutes; why should I have to wait an hour for a tow?

When your vehicle doesn’t have these goofy warning lights, you are forced into the habit of actually looking for obvious problems. When you get the warning lights, you get silly incidents like false positives all the time, and you don’t have the electrical skill to turn them off. And you then forget to look for the obvious, since that’s what the warning light is for.

This is one area where I have plenty of respect for OTR drivers: They habitually will check around every area of their truck and trailer every time they are about to pull away, to make extra-certain that they don’t have any obvious problems staring at them. Car drivers? Not so much.

Inspections are a pain in the neck for everyone, but they hurt poor and disadvantaged people harder than most other people. These folks are usually driving 20 year old cars that are well past their prime. They struggle to keep things up, but most of them are generally safe cars. When the inspection mechanics see these older, more worn cars they don’t have any empathy for the poor schmuck living paycheck to paycheck who drives it. They just see a vehicle they’re sure won’t pass, so they dig until they find something, while letting the new Range Rover slide by without even looking at it.

Another problem with inspections is that to do them properly it takes about an hour. Here in Missouri they only make $12 on each inspection, so they are losing quite a bit of money every time they do one. All the shops around here won’t make an appointment for it, so you have to sit and wait until they decide to get around to it, which sometimes takes hours. If you are a regular customer who brings them other business you get treated pretty good, but for those of us who still do all our own auto repairs they don’t have much incentive to make the effort to do anything for you when it comes to getting the sticker and they try to make it as big of a pain as they can to try to discourage you from bringing it back to them the next time.

Inspections are welfare for mechanics. In Pennsylvania anyone with a set of air tools usually has an inspection license too. Once you’re hooked into the network its no big deal to get a sticker. But until I “knew a guy” it was almost always a $500 sticker, or more if I wasn’t paying attention or didn’t dress like a college student.

And let’s not forget the other problem, if I knew the brakes were getting thin, but it was another month until the inspection was due, well, why not wait since I know the wrench is going to find something wrong anyway?That happened several times when I figured I’d let something major go so that he’ll overlook the smaller stuff. Usually worked too.

I had a Chevy Venture Van. I took it in for NY inspection, everything passed. When I started it to leave the mechanic’s the brake pedal went right to the floor. One of the front brake lines blew out right there. AAA thought I was crazy to want it towed home when I was already at a repair shop. I put new brake lines all the way around and probably still saved money. So you’re definitely not safe just because of the sticker. That van also had a check engine light that came on periodically, stupid EVAP ghost. I took great pride in getting it to pass OBD2 inspection with my trusty scan tool. I still see the van tooling down the road occasionally. Makes me wonder how many people scrap perfectly good cars because of needless emissions nonsense.

The USPS is a quasi-privatised federal agency, and they have never had license plates.
Each post office is like a franchise, they can pick, choose, and ignore the rules in the DMM as they choose.
It used to be that one could receive general delivery at any post office, based on zip code. That is only true where there is only one post office in a given municipality. Then there are places like Quartzsite, Arizona where street addresses are of no use in receiving mail because there is no mail delivery to street addresses. If you are lucky enough to live at a street address, the best you can do is get a free post office box. If not, you get general delivery for 30 days and then you have to rent a post office box for $47 for 6 months. I find it easier, faster, and cheaper to pick up packages at a private receiving company. The post office at home can just keep all my mail until I return in the spring.

We have TMPS to tell people what they could see if they bothered to look, but nothing to tell them what they can’t see, even if they look, that they have a tail, brake, or signal light out. Of course, if there is a loose nut behind the wheel, everything else is up for grabs.

No inspection here in OK for many years.

The inspections have always been a bit of a farce.
Plus being a pain.
I inspected my wife’s car years ago. She had the engine 2 quarts down in oil. The radiator needed fluid. The battery at the time needed water. That was a Buick Century wagon. Same car had a light module go out coming back from Akron, Ohio one night. The Buick dealer was not even open on a Saturday.
The truth is the only effective inspection should be at the factory. The only EPA inspection I ever failed with was an American made vehicle that was 10 years old.
All the foreign cars passed.
The problem is highway robbery by the state. And that is one thing they are very good at.
Take the camera inspections at a light as an example. They don’t tell you they shortened the yellow light to guarantee people violating the law!
Last night the yellow was approximately 2 seconds. The courts do not want to interfere with the robbery of citizens and that is really wrong.
We need to get all the big brother laws off the books and get government as much as possible out of our lives. To do that we have to get rid of an entire class of lazy bums. That would be your lawyers.
Lawyers have the most inclusive union the world has ever seen and they rob people without any check on the system.
Doctors are not very far behind them. Though a doctor may save your life in the process. It might cost a 160,000 dollars to do it.
The professional class in this country is to blame. They believe they do not have to work for a living and rightfully so.
So they set up systems where they steal the money legally and they are very good at it.
In the process they steal from windows and unwed mothers raising children. They steal 1/3rd of the first check you get on workman’s comp.
(You cannot get workman’s comp anymore without a lawyer being involved.)
Like a bank charging 30 dollars for an accounting error. If they make the mistake they do not get charged.
A healthy system would only have 15% professional people in the system. We are currently much higher than that.
I suggest we get rid of all the thief laws. The ones that cheat the general public legally out of their hard earned money.

I would never live in an “inspection state” again! The time and money that was wasted every year fixing piddling non-issues, like superficial windshield cracks; brake hoses appearing to be more than 6 months old; etc. can now be used to actually improve my vehicles and fix things that actually matter, now that I don’t live in an inspection state.

And funny, how the inspections were always more concerned with non-issues, or with just making some money off of you, that they’d often fail to catch things that actually mattered….like the old F350 that this guy whom my friend knew, brought in, with plumber’s compression fittings holding the brake lines together. THAT sailed right through!

The worst state though, is Taxachussetts! And their inspections are the worst, too! So many not-very-old vehicles in the junkyards there…perfectly good vehicles, which were scrapped because they had a few very minor issues, which, if paying to have fixed, could easily add up to several grand in that communist hell-hole, where everything is super-expensive (A brake job; a small rust hole in the sheet metal from all the salt they use on the raods; an exhaust leak = more to fix than your creampuff 8 year-old vehicle is worth- and yes, they will fail ’em for any body rust!).

Then they do an emissions test. How much more pollution is created by having to manufacture thousands upon thousands of new vehicles, because perfectly good ones are being scrapped?

In Missouri, they will fail your vehicle if the rubber brake lines have tiny weather cracks, or if it has a cracked windshield anywhere in the path of a windshield wiper blade even though it remains as smooth as a new one due to it being safety glass.

Here in Commiefornia, where everything is run by jack booted thugs, we don’t have car safety inspections! All that CA cares about is that you’re running a stock exhaust and intake system, so once every two years, we have to drag our cars in for that. It doesn’t matter if it’s on fire, driving on its rims without tires, as long as it passes the OBD-II diagnostic, you’re good to go. If you bought an aftermarket air filter, well, too bad, you fail.

We don’t seem to have any more problems with poorly maintained cars than other states, most of whom do mandate those inspections.

The only benefit I see, as a guy who maintains his cars, is that the certification of a car to some kind of technical standard is worthwhile whenever the ownership changes. That way, the new owner would be reassured that the car he’s buying has met some standard of repair. In MD, you need to have a state inspection prior to licensing a car (i.e. putting plates on it) for the first time. Typically, this is concurrent with titling the car too, but you *can* title a car w/o getting plates for it. (say, if you’ve bought a project car.) Now in VA, you have a yearly inspection. Like Eric says, inspected today may not be safe tomorrow. For example, my wife’s car just passed, but the tires should be replaced. I was planning on replacing them in 2018, so now I can do that according to *my* timetable. I just hate the gov’t telling me I have to buy tires.

Oh, BTW, if you get caught w/expired VA state inspection, it is $100 fine. The cynic in me says this is mostly what inspection is all about: I see cops all the time just walking thru stopped traffic pulling people over for expired inspections. (Happened to me too, once dammit!)

when I inspect a vehicle I make two lists one for a sticker then recommended or in the near future repairs Tires I grade on a curve spring time I will let them slide and fall I will not let a borderline tire go sometimes you put the sticker on it so they can save up the money to replace the part and them getting a 135 dollar penalty does not help any one that is money they could use to fix their car It is the same as penalizing some one for not having some thing they could not afford in the first place like health insurance

Ultimately, we are all responsible for ourselves

and THIS is the root of all such tomfoolery, Eric. The ral diseases are wo, both forms of moral cancer: first, kids are raised these days to not ever really carry any responsibility themselves, that’s always “somebody else’s job”.

Second, government as god, another mantra from the control freak lefties, “assumes all responsibility” for us, if we only DO WHAT WE”RE TOLD TO DO. Instead of bearing the burden of taking care of our own horse, mule, car, as are all but commanded to fob it off onto someone/thing else. government being the all knowing all present all wise all powerful provider of all we need.

The Utah Legislature, in a moment of sanity, repealed vehicle inspections in the last legislative session. The new statute takes effect in 2018.

How does one go about disabling the friggin tire pressure monitors?

VA. used to require inspection every six months. It’s been a while.
I seem to recall that Mass. at one time didn’t have a regular inspection. You were subject to being pulled over and having your car gone over on the side of the road. That was probably in the 1950’s.
Funny thing is if you look at official USPS vehicles, they don’t have inspection stickers on them.