Scrap Emissions Inspections
It's time for the state and federal officials who have promoted vehicle emission inspection programs to come clean. They should publicly admit that vehicle inspection programs have no positive effect on improving air quality. They should admit that any study done on the effectiveness of emissions inspections has found that emissions inspections are a waste of the public's time and money. Air quality in most regions of the US is improving. The reason: cleaner running cars and cleaner fuels.Meanwhile, the EPA is plowing around the country, tightening the screws on states and cities and demanding more inspection programs and tighter requirements to pass these useless tests. Our elected officials seem to be oblivious to the waste and inconvenience these inspection programs cause. They seem content to blame the EPA and pretend that they, elected officials, have no power to bring a little sanity to this situation. What they are really doing is shirking their responsibility to represent the best interests of their constituents.
So why does the government persist in this folly? It's the usual mixture of power and money. There is a whole bureaucracy anchored in place to maintain and perpetuate the inspection system empire. There are commercial interests who feed off the inspection system trough, to the tune of billions of dollars. This combination of corporation and state make a powerful obstacle to change in general. But change it should.
