Mandatory Safety Inspections: Easier Said Than Done

By Aaron Lowe

The Car Care Council estimates that there is over $62 million in unperformed maintenance on motor vehicles every year. There could be a myriad of reasons that people choose not to have needed work performed on their car, whether it’s to save money, time or simply ignorance as to the maintenance that should be undertaken on their vehicle. Not only do vehicle service facilities lose potential revenue, but the absence of maintenance is likely going to take years off the life of a car and maybe, more importantly, could be endangering the safety of the driver and those with whom they share the road.

The absence of good maintenance practices by car owners was likely one of the key reasons that many states began mandating that cars obtain yearly safety inspection, known as Periodic Motor Vehicle Safety Inspections (PMVI). While many in the vehicle repair industry see PMVI as a great program benefiting their business and the public, car owners do not always share this view. In fact, the current state of PMVI programs would leave one to wonder if safety inspection is heading for extinction unless something is done soon.

PMVI began as a voluntary program in Massachusetts, New York and Maryland in the mid to late 1920s and became mandatory in 1929. In 1966, Congress passed the Highway Safety Act, which included a provision that made vehicle safety inspection a required element of each state’s highway safety program. By 1968, 31 states and the District of Columbia had programs that required car owners to have their vehicle safety systems inspected on a yearly basis.

In 1973, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration established vehicle-in-use standards and states risked losing highway funds for not establishing a complying safety inspection program. This is when things began to fall apart.

The program standards for safety inspection that were promulgated by NHTSA were considered pretty weak. Many states, unhappy with the burden being placed on them to establish safety programs, put in place ineffective programs. Perceiving that the inspections were both inconvenient and ineffective, the public called on their local elected officials to eliminate them. In 1976, Congress gave in to the public dissatisfaction with safety inspection and eliminated the ability of NHTSA to take away highway money from states that failed to implement a safety inspection program. With the federal pressure off, many states shed their safety inspection program. Now, according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, only 16 states have programs, and four of those states have gone to inspections every two years. Further, there are serious efforts every year in some states to get rid of the programs.

Why are inspections so unpopular with the public and therefore politicians? There are probably two main reasons: They are inconvenient and most people do not see the benefits to them or to highway safety. In fact, until recently there was little available data demonstrating the correlation between safety inspection and improved safety. Further, many of the programs that have been in place have been poorly operated and inconvenient. Nothing can kill a program faster than those long lines at an inspection station at the end of the month.

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