Texas?!? I'm shocked.

I live in Illinois and safety inspections at about $30 each were required twice a year for my truck registered at 12000lbs. Inspection requirement was changed to once a year as of 1-1-19. All vehicles registered over 8000lbs in Illinois require safety inspection. I don't know what the inspection cost is for bigger trucks. In the Chicago area most gas powered vehicles do require emission testing. No fee for emission testing. I do wish they would check people light when there.

Huuuuh....surprise, surprise....good old California doesn't have "annual vehicle inspetions" - only bi-annual smog inspections.

I guess CA is a "freedom place" in some respects after all. :B

bobsallyh wrote:
I would suggest you try Pennsylvania State Vehicle Inspection on for size.

I could write a book about the damage done to my vehicles by the PA State Inspection Stations. On many occasions the vehicles were returned to me completely unsafe to operate.

Dutch_12078 wrote:

colliehauler wrote:
Just add another fee to go along with the new tag upgrade fee and vehicle theft prevention fee that was just added. Far more accidents from stupidity of drivers then from vehicle failures.

Perhaps you can enlighten me to how many deaths from vehicle failure out of the 380 that died last year. Could not find data from the MN state on any mechanical failure fatalities.

I doubt that there's any accurate reporting of accidents caused by worn tires or brakes that prevented a vehicle from stopping the few feet shorter that could have made the difference between a hit and a miss unless the wear is so extensive that it's obvious.

To use your example of tires, they could barely pass inspection and be worn out way before the next inspection. I looked at MNDOT reports and statistics for deaths for 2017, 72 were drunk driving, 88 speed related, 25 distracted driving, 72 unbelted. If mechanical failure was a issue I'm sure it would be listed. Like I said the money could be spent to fix real problems instead of imaginary ones.

twodownzero wrote:

monkey44 wrote:
Inspections help keep junk and unsafe vehicles off the road. It's a pretty inexpensive safeguard for the highways.

I would imagine, on the contrary, it's an extraordinary expense to the taxpayers for which the fees do not cover the expense of having the inspections. I also suspect that the social costs it avoids, accidents due to equipment failures, are much more common and cause much less property damage than you might expect. I recall seeing some data on NHTSA's website regarding tire failures and the average amount of property damage caused by tire failures. The average loss was less than what a single tire for my pickup costs. Most people simply do not drive enough or keep an older car long enough for major, catastrophic failures to cause any harm to anyone else. When's the last time you saw a vehicle on the side of the road with a separated tie rod or a broken ball joint that wasn't from an accident? How frequently do you read about a brake failure that causes major bodily injury or property damage? My suspicion suggests that hiring even one more police officer to enforce the laws against distracted driving would be wayyyyy more cost effective than inspecting 100% of the vehicles to catch a fraction of 1% of the vehicles out there that are truly dangerous. Not to mention that the ones who aren't complying are probably strongly correlated with the fraction of 1% we're talking about.

Googling "efficacy of vehicle inspections" returned results that overwhelmingly supported abolishing these inspections; one website says that $600 million alone is spent in a single year dealing with them in Pennsylvania. Another website claimed that insurance rates are no lower in states requiring inspections, suggesting that the actuaries share my view--that these inspections are a wash at best. I am not a statistician or professional economist so I don't know the actual answer. But my intuition suggests as I claim above, that vehicle inspections for personal vehicles are more costly than the problem they seek to reduce or eliminate. I would be genuinely surprised to learn otherwise.

Thanks Twodownzero for more in depth of what I was saying. People are trying to create a solution for a problem that doesn't exist, statistically.

Makes no difference what other states require. To get a registration sticker you have to have proof of the required liability insurance and it has to have passed the safety inspection within 3 months of paying the registration fee.

monkey44 wrote:
Inspections help keep junk and unsafe vehicles off the road. It's a pretty inexpensive safeguard for the highways.

I would imagine, on the contrary, it's an extraordinary expense to the taxpayers for which the fees do not cover the expense of having the inspections. I also suspect that the social costs it avoids, accidents due to equipment failures, are much more common and cause much less property damage than you might expect. I recall seeing some data on NHTSA's website regarding tire failures and the average amount of property damage caused by tire failures. The average loss was less than what a single tire for my pickup costs. Most people simply do not drive enough or keep an older car long enough for major, catastrophic failures to cause any harm to anyone else. When's the last time you saw a vehicle on the side of the road with a separated tie rod or a broken ball joint that wasn't from an accident? How frequently do you read about a brake failure that causes major bodily injury or property damage? My suspicion suggests that hiring even one more police officer to enforce the laws against distracted driving would be wayyyyy more cost effective than inspecting 100% of the vehicles to catch a fraction of 1% of the vehicles out there that are truly dangerous. Not to mention that the ones who aren't complying are probably strongly correlated with the fraction of 1% we're talking about.

Googling "efficacy of vehicle inspections" returned results that overwhelmingly supported abolishing these inspections; one website says that $600 million alone is spent in a single year dealing with them in Pennsylvania. Another website claimed that insurance rates are no lower in states requiring inspections, suggesting that the actuaries share my view--that these inspections are a wash at best. I am not a statistician or professional economist so I don't know the actual answer. But my intuition suggests as I claim above, that vehicle inspections for personal vehicles are more costly than the problem they seek to reduce or eliminate. I would be genuinely surprised to learn otherwise.

colliehauler wrote:
Just add another fee to go along with the new tag upgrade fee and vehicle theft prevention fee that was just added. Far more accidents from stupidity of drivers then from vehicle failures.

Perhaps you can enlighten me to how many deaths from vehicle failure out of the 380 that died last year. Could not find data from the MN state on any mechanical failure fatalities.

I doubt that there's any accurate reporting of accidents caused by worn tires or brakes that prevented a vehicle from stopping the few feet shorter that could have made the difference between a hit and a miss unless the wear is so extensive that it's obvious.

I would suggest you try Pennsylvania State Vehicle Inspection on for size.

sayoung wrote:
OP, you moving here or just bashing Texas ? The inspection costs a whole whopping $14 . We also require an upgrade to your DL if your RV's gvwr or combined gvwr exceeds 26001 lbs.

No, certainly not bashing. Just ran across it and it seemed so.....UnTexan to me. Wondering how they slipped that one by you all.

I imagine that it aint the money, its the aggravation of it all. Unless you like giving money to gov and taking time from your off time to do a gov HoneyDo. Glad we don't do it in my state- hope you all can get it changed there.

Also the OP was to give out the link for state comparisons from AAA since you asked my motivation.