Hacker News Reader

Comment by epiphonium | Hacker News Reader

As a European, this is yet another aspect of American life that surprises me... although perhaps it shouldn't be surprising.

British cars need to pass a yearly inspection (called the MOT) to be legally allowed on the road, and if you drive around with a failed or expired MOT then you WILL get caught and the punishment will hurt.

It's quick and easy to get the test done yearly and it's not a big deal; the system works well. You can even go online and look up the MOT history of any car, which is handy if you're about to buy the car as it'll let you know about any historical faults.

I assume there's something similar in most developed countries... why does America not do this?

View on HN

Part of America doesn't have vehicle inspections, and in those places, the reason is often because it balances the ability of people to afford transportation in places where there are not alternatives.

It is worth noting that mechanical failure is not a leading cause of crashes, even in places without inspections.

This is the first time I have heard affordability of transportation as a reason. I am a 51 year lifelong Floridian. I remember sitting in the vehicle inspection line as a kid. When Florida discontinued the statewide inspections in 1981, it was pitched as being due to the costs of the tests and long wait times. I see it as more of a populist measure as most voters don't really care about safety or pollution. They just did not want the hassle.

Maybe poor people paying for an annual inspection is the affordability argument. But I cannot see it as anything other than typical myopia as I see many automobiles in Florida that should not be on the road.

(I vividly remember that we had to take a work truck to be inspected. It was a truck that rarely left the fish house where my father kept his commercial fishing boat. It mostly moved nets around the property. It had to be inspected and was going to fail because there was a crack in the windshield. As there was no requirement that a truck have a windshield, my father removed the windshield right there and allowed the truck to pass.)

>Maybe poor people paying for an annual inspection is the affordability argument

The affordability argument is that shops have an incentive to sell work and they have an incentive to not draw the ire of some capricious regulator by passing questionable cars so they sell all sorts of work that doesn't strictly need to be done and over the life of a car this amounts to thousands mostly concentrated toward end of life at which point the car will be owned by someone least able to afford it.

"affordability of transportation" ~= "the costs of the tests and long wait times"

Time off of work is a big opportunity and/or monetary cost for low income hourly employees.

Massachusetts (USA) has annual vehicle inspection. Not sure if lights are on the checklist.

Virginia also has an inspection requirement: https://vsp.virginia.gov/safety-and-enforcement/vehicle-safe...

My state, Colorado, requires a annual or bi-annual emissions test. No inspection for safety/operability is required though there are a lot of laws on the books for things like good tires and functioning headlights.

>developed countries... why does America

You answered your own question. Snark aside, in the US, the idea of restricting yourself for the purpose of vague benefits to others is known as "Socialism" to at a minimum 60 million people.

States rights!

Many states do require similar annual inspections. The standards of those inspections vary widely, however.

Hilariously enough it can even vary within states. EG: AFAIK, only two counties in Washington state require emissions testing on a semi-regular basis, and nowhere requires safety inspections.

I got burned by this by moving to one of the two counties with an otherwise innocuous check engine light that would have failed the emissions test so I had to get it fixed.

The federal EPA requires states to run emissions inspections in urban counties but leaves it up to the state for rural counties.

There's no federal requirement for safety inspections so that varies state to state.

Good to know! I'll have to go look up what the threshold for an 'urban county' is now, thanks.

And as others have mentioned, even if the state does not, sometimes the county does which means inspection standard vary wildly.

USA is like 50 separate UKs.

So it's actually 200 countries?

> why does America not do this?

By now I'd have expected most people on HN to understand the relative roles of the US federal and state governments, and not make gross generalizations that are easily disproven. But, you're a green account, maybe you really are new.

> I'd have expected most people on HN to understand the relative roles of the US federal and state governments

You probably didn’t mean it that way, but man, that’s some ‘Murica fuck yeah material.

I know that different US states have some degree of autonomy, and I think they have a similar system in Brazil, and I’m pretty sure Switzerland also does it. Why exactly do you expect me to know anything but the bare minimum about the different levels of government in a country seven thousand kilometers away?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com