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Texas Ends Mandatory Vehicle Safety Inspections

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Okay, gonna go out on a limb and say that I cautiously agree on the safety inspection issue, because it IS a personal responsibility.
That said, if they do end mandatory safety inspections, they should alter the law so that if you get pulled over for an obvious safety problem, a citation and fine is also your personal responsibility, and flagrant violations should trigger a hike in the owner's insurance policy.
And if you're involved in an accident and a safety issue becomes evident, again...an additional citation and spike in your insurance costs.
Texas isn't saying they don't care if your vehicle is safe, they're saying the state government isn't interested in doing something a responsible vehicle owner should be doing on their own.
I'm okay with that for private vehicles, it IS the owner's responsibility and we should not need a government office to remind them of it.
This is indeed a case of smaller government being a benefit and my conservative side thinks it's a good idea.
Commercial vehicles, WHOLE OTHER ballgame, keep the mandatory safety inspections as they are.

 
Another reason to stay away from texass. Personal responsibility except for library books, women's health, etc. What a joke. Forced teaching of the Bible can't be far behind.
 
A byproduct of TX vehicle inspection was it prevented homeless derelict campers from popping up all over the place.
 
Hell no. If you're going to use a public road, your vehicle should be safe.

I don't want to sue someone for my friend or relative dying in a road crash: it won't bring them back to life.
 
dmpi said:
A byproduct of TX vehicle inspection was it prevented homeless derelict campers from popping up all over the place.
Click to expand...

... ie parking ... where the faults in their vehicle posed no risk to anyone.
 
I never really understood safety inspections for private vehicles.

CA has not used them in at least 50 years.
 
mrjurrs said:
I never really understood safety inspections for private vehicles.

CA has not used them in at least 50 years.
Click to expand...

But I suspect you can get in a lot of trouble if you get pulled over and the vehicle has obvious issues that could be easily taken care of.
A "friend" of mine got pulled over for non-operative brake lights but the cop decided to check a little more closely and impounded the car after he discovered it had recently been involved in an accident due to his front brakes not working at all.
He'd been driving around on rear brakes only and when he struck another vehicle he injured a female occupant who had just started a new second job to help pay down some debt, and his crash rendered the driver's car inoperable, and he too, lost HIS job, and his car.

I don't actually know how much trouble he got into but he isn't driving anymore, and it turns out he still has the car in his possession, rotting away in the yard.
I'd ask but I don't really have much contact with him anymore after he called asking to borrow some money.
I've never looked into California issues on unsafe vehicles in the last ten years.
Maybe it's a good time to do so, in case I become a victim of some butthead driving around in an unsafe car.

Hopefully California has guidelines similar to what I mentioned in my earlier post.
But in the end, the mandatory safety inspections did not seem to catch very many unsafe cars because people simply didn't try to register them or get them inspected, they just drove around anyway.
All I am arguing is that we shift all of it to the drivers instead of asking the state to do something drivers should do on their own, because many of them will still get caught anyway.
So the state inspections don't do enough good to maintain them.

Concentrate mandatory state safety inspections on commercial vehicles, that's where it does do a lot of good.
 
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The Stars Tremble said:
Hell no. If you're going to use a public road, your vehicle should be safe.

I don't want to sue someone for my friend or relative dying in a road crash: it won't bring them back to life.
Click to expand...

My only argument is that state safety inspections for private passenger vehicles just translates into more people not taking them in for inspection at all.
If it could be proven that FAR FEWER unsafe vehicles are on the road thanks to state safety inspections I would change my mind but after living IN Texas for ten years I did not see any reduction in unsafe vehicles.
There were lots of them rolling around then and there will still be about the same amount after state inspections go away.

My argument is that cops can check vehicles when they do a traffic stop for something else OR when they observe an unsafe condition, and impound an unsafe car if it's obviously dangerous.
 
mrjurrs said:
I never really understood safety inspections for private vehicles.

CA has not used them in at least 50 years.
Click to expand...
California has a network of what they call "OPG's" --- Official Police Garages and they contract with these companies because they impound cars when drivers do not have insurance or when their registration is expired. They do not pull people over FOR expired tags but if they do a traffic stop for anything else then yes, they still do impound the cars. Same goes for safety stuff, first time if it is minor they issue a fix-it ticket, next time if it not fixed and the ticket handled, or if it's a serious safety issue, they impound anyway.

It boils down to effectiveness and I argue that on the spot works better than state safety inspections in terms of dollars spent and the old state safety inspections was really just "a jobs program" for mechanics, many of whom say they hate doing them anyway for relatively new cars because they don't make much money unless the cars demonstrate problems that they can charge money to fix.
They don't like me bringing in our 2017 Pacifica handicap van because it has very low miles and runs perfectly so the 50 to 75 bucks they charge just takes away from repair jobs where they can make hundreds or even thousands instead.
They would rather do 200 expensive safety repair jobs on older cars with problems than waste their time with hundreds of newer creampuff cars which end up delaying their ability to do the better paying repair jobs.
And most SMOG inspection stations don't do repairs, just inspections and those places are already backed up with smog inspections anyway so adding safety inspections just slows them down from the quicker smog jobs.
 
Virginia has a private vehicle inspection yearly, years ago, it was every six months. LEOs can’t tell the condition of steering and suspension components via traffic stops. VA issues a windshield sticker that has the month of expiration. The stickers are usually enforced pretty well. With people paying less attention to maintenance, I think it is advisable to have a look annually.
 
A fix-it ticket used to be a real thing in CA. I completely agree on inspecting commercial vehicles.
 
mrjurrs said:
A fix-it ticket used to be a real thing in CA. I completely agree on inspecting commercial vehicles.
Click to expand...
Oh it still is, I got a fix-it ticket for my son's old 2006 Scion because my ad hoc attempt at making the headlights work better did not meet with the cops approval and I had to put back the old fogged over crap on it again.



Like so many kids with their first cars, my son got into a few accidents and banged it up pretty bad but despite it looking like an eyesore would you believe it runs PERFECT?
He kept all the fluids topped up, had good tires on it, didn't drive like a maniac and changed the oil but he got banged up and then a month after I took it over a hit and run driver creamed it one more time.
I replaced both control arms and struts and it handles great, runs like a dream and people run FROM IT because it looks awful.

I stuck two "non-automotive" LED lighting units on it but the cops said they're illegal and I had to go back to the crappy stock lights and settle my fix-it ticket.
PS: I truly DESPISE the new PLASTIC headlights because the last thing I want to do is continually POLISH my goddam headlights because car makers can't be bothered to come up with something that doesn't fog over with UV rays. I want to go back to GLASS headlight housings but for some reason I must be the only person who feels that way.
 
The absolutely do pull people over for expired tags. The state will get their money one way or the other.
 
zincwarrior said:
We get a plethora of Mexican commercial trucks coming in and through. They are not safe.


Agreed actually.
Click to expand...
What makes you think Mexican trucks are not safe?
 
Why didn't you send the kid to Pick A Part to get all the parts he damaged to fix the vehicle.

Also if he has gotten in a few accidents, he needs more training before he drives again.
 
Libertarians are great, until their unregulated machines kill you.

What morons.
 
Mason66 said:
Why didn't you send the kid to Pick A Part to get all the parts he damaged to fix the vehicle.
Also if he has gotten in a few accidents, he needs more training before he drives again.
Click to expand...

He was a kid and these were a couple of new driver fender benders.
It was me getting creamed by a hit and run driver that did the most damage.

He doesn't need any training anymore because he left this world on January 3rd 2023.
He wasn't supposed to see his first birthday but miraculously he managed to make it to twenty-seven.
He did manage to keep the oil changed and everything it needed to run well.

 
Mason66 said:
The absolutely do pull people over for expired tags. The state will get their money one way or the other.
Click to expand...

No you're wrong .... they currently do not pull people over for expired tags right now....not unless they are WAAAY WAYYY out of date.
I was in the gas station and an LASD deputy asked me why Karen's Pacifica had an expired sticker. (2023 instead of 2024)
It didn't....someone peeled it off.
I showed him the registration and he said that it used to he had to pull folks over but there is a moratorium and when he saw the reg was current he
told me to go to the DMV website and they would issue a replacement sticker....for about twenty bucks.

He was initially curious because of course the car is fairly new, or new looking, which it is.
It was a "why is your sticker expired" and I was shocked to walk back there and see the 2023 sticker because Lord knows we paid enough
to keep it current.
 

Surely a valid safety inspection pass would be required in order to get car insurance? Isn't that how it works on most countries? Certainly does in mine
 
Aristaeus said:
Surely a valid safety inspection pass would be required in order to get car insurance? Isn't that how it works on most countries? Certainly does in mine
Click to expand...

This is not a hill I want to die on, I'm just saying that the real burden should be on the vehicle owner.
I'm still okay WITH state safety inspections, particularly if the car is a wobbly PoS but I figure cops know it when they see it
and that's when a PoS broken jalopy gets pulled over, or when a newer car LOOKS and acts like something is wrong with it.
Otherwise most fairly recent cars SHOULD pass an inspection simply because they're not old and worn out enough for it to be an issue.

Besides, I no longer live in Texas anyway, here in CA they still have mandatory inspections every other year for safety and smog as always.
 
beefheart said:
Libertarians are great, until their unregulated machines kill you.

What morons.
Click to expand...
I find this apoplexy over the cessation of mandatory safety inspections hilarious. Until this thread, I'd never even heard of such a thing. And now, with this change, only fourteen states mandate them for passenger vehicles. Most are in the eastern coastal region. And Missouri and Louisiana.

The rest of us seem to manage just fine with our unregulated death machines. This even includes Arizonans, believe it or not.
 
Big complex machine that goes at high speed in close proximity to other people. The operator is not qualified to understand or diagnose that machine's safety systems.

What could go wrong.
 
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