Last week I took part in one of our annual mandated days of semi-lost productivity here in Pennsylvania. And because we have several vehicles in our family I get to take part in another one later this week.
No, as much as I would have liked my day of semi-lost productivity to have been a snow day, it wasn’t.
It was time for the annual vehicle inspection on one of our cars. A day where I drop my car off in the morning, and then don’t get to use it all day while someone looks at it to ensure it complies with all the items on Pennsylvania’s inspection list for passenger cars and light trucks. A list that takes up an entire 15 pages in Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Publication 45. 15 pages!
As a youth growing up in Pennsylvania the advent of your 16th birthday was a momentous occasion because it meant you could get your learner’s permit and legally begin driving a car. No more pedaling your lime-green Raleigh Chopper with the highly-padded banana seat, center-console gear shift, 16-inch front wheel and 20 inch knobby-tire rear wheel whenever you wanted to go somewhere to hang out with your friends.
No, the freedom of the open road would soon be yours.
Except, well, the freedom of the open road came with more than just parental stipulations. It came with costs and governmental oversight. That government oversight being the need to have your car inspected every six months. This was back in the day when six months meant you might have driven a mere two or three thousand miles in your car, causing hardly any wear-and-tear at all, and certainly not enough to warrant a new inspection.
As an end-of-year junior here at Penn State back in 1980, I remember reading the Daily Collegian’s issue on Monday, May 5. The front page had a large photo of the Blue-White game that weekend, and inside were more photos of the student-run celebrations of Movin’ On and the Sy Barash Regatta that also took place that weekend.
But on page four 4, among the ads for the Phyrst, Cheap Thrills and Hi Way Pizza scattered across the two-page spread – the Phyrst was celebrating its first Polish holiday, St. Stanislaus Day, that Tuesday – was a short Associated Press article with a dateline from Harrisburg that caught my eye. The headline read “State inspects car inspection.”
The primary point of the article was that Pennsylvania’s vehicle safety inspections had been in place since 1929 and were “considered one of the toughest of the 26 states with full safety inspection programs,” but that it was possible there was no safety benefit to the driving public from having it. A national study had found that states without vehicle inspections had as at least as good highway safety, if not better than, states with vehicle inspections.
Keep in mind this was back in the days before the internet, when finding such scholarly information would have been virtually impossible for the average citizen, yet alone knowing it existed. As a young adult I had only been driving for five years at that point, and had already in that short time come to despise the semi-annual need to pay money to have someone tell me what I already knew – that our car worked.
And here it was in black-and-white, information that Pennsylvania’s twice-a-year vehicle inspections were not only wasting resident’s time and money because they were quite possibly worthless, but that they could be doing exactly the opposite of what they were supposed to be doing, making highway safety worse. Which was the reason that the state was inspecting inspections.
And they must have found something because within a few years Pennsylvania changed to annual vehicle inspections for passenger cars and light trucks – a slight relief for millions of the commonwealth’s vehicle owners.
However, by 1986 I had moved to Orlando, Florida and discovered a new land of opportunity and freedom. No local or state income taxes. Beer and wine sold in grocery stores and convenience stores. Year-round sunshine. No snow shoveling. And no vehicle inspections.
That’s right, no vehicle inspections. Millions of people driving cars on roads and highways all over the state and not a single one of them needing to be handed over for a day every year to determine, again, what you knew every time you turned the car on: it worked. And, shock of shocks, my car insurance rates went down as well. A very odd turn of events for a 20-something male driver.
More than a decade later, my wife and I did return to live in Pennsylvania – where I was reminded of our various annoying governmental oversights, including our annual vehicle inspections. Oh, and our car insurance rates increased. I will admit that getting used to car inspections did take me a number of years, as I often found myself driving my car and realized that the inspection sticker was months overdue.
Now, here we are more than 40 years after Pennsylvania switched from semi-annual to annual vehicle inspections for cars and light trucks, and in the interim more states have jettisoned this government mandate. Today, there are only 14 states that still require annual vehicle inspections. Two of the three most populous states in the country – California and Florida – have no vehicle safety inspections, and the third, Texas, will drop theirs next year.
Which is why it’s encouraging to see some Pennsylvania legislators attempting to remove our state from the list of those still hanging on to this antiquated practice. Last August, state Sen. Marty Flynn sent a memorandum to his Senate colleagues asking them to join legislation he planned to introduce that would eliminate annual vehicle inspections.
He cited a 2015 Government Accountability Office report that found the value of state vehicle safety inspections was hard to quantify. The senator noted that, “Put simply: vehicle safety inspection mandates do not equate to safer roadways. They are an inconvenience to vehicle owners and their wallets.”
Which brings up another issue with safety inspections – are they just a ruse to increase repair business? As Sen. Flynn mentioned in his memorandum, Pennsylvania’s Motor License Fund sees no benefit of requiring annual safety inspections because, “the only funds that are sent to PennDOT from the auto repair facility and vehicle owner is for the cost of the windshield sticker.” So, who gets the money?
The repair ruse sentiment was echoed by a Texas lawmaker, state Rep. Cody Harris, who fought for the elimination of inspections in that state when he said, “These inspections are a waste of time for Texas citizens and a money-making Ponzi scheme used by some shady dealerships to upsell consumers with unnecessary repairs.” Interestingly, there is an auto repair place in town I recommend my friends stay away from because of exactly that sort of issue – supposedly needing new brakes when the ones to be replaced were less than a year old, and subsequently passed inspections for a few years at other repair shops.
So, as I go about my business this week, including a day of semi-lost productivity due to another vehicle needing an inspection, I keep my fingers crossed that Pennsylvania legislators might look to reduce some parts of our vehicle code rather than increase it. And take another step in the efforts to bring our great commonwealth into the bright sunshine of less government oversight. How about we get rid of these annual car and light truck inspections, huh?
