Then why do so few cars fail the test? There is no economic justification for spending millons of man hours for negligible return on air quality. A "working family" must take time off the job to go stand in line for a test while they loose income. The net effect is to lower the standard of living of the poor.
And since the tests are applied in urban areas they disproportionately affect minority drivers, who can not afford the later more expensive cars. This makes it a RACIST policy.
Makie the poor criminals and seize their property or their means of making a livelyhood. This is the engiligthened way? What makes you think that rational human beings want to drive unsafe cars that waste gas?
I see only well heeled drivers should be allowed the privilege of driving.
The question is why do so many fail? Cars today are designed to go
100,000+ miles and still be good emissionswise.
It's also known that the I/M 240 test is very sensitive to operator inputs. A tester with an agenda could easily fail a perfectly legit car, or pass a failing one. And on the former, even CARB's EOs are barely worth the paper they're printed on in real life, regardless of what CARB says.
Replacing the 10 dirtiest electric plants in the US would yield far far far greater results for far far less. But enviros hate cars, not power plants (unless they're nukes...)
Environmental legislation in the US is driven by emotion, not science. Few industries have cleaned up as much as the automotive industry has. Those trains environmentalists like us all to take generally have engines so dirty that they couldn't pass emissions regs for anything BUT rail use, and even the 'new' ones that forced GM out of the market are still allow 2X or more pollution per HP hour than a highway diesel...
Yes. 45 min at a 9-5 test center to 'prove' you're not violating the law. And risk dammage to your car that the state won't pay to repair, and car warrenties may not really cover (regardless of what they say).
Only with cars do we accept a standard of guilty until proven innocent. Imagine the outrage if everyone had to prove they weren't guilty of murder each year, or they'd get sent to jail...
And the struggling and shrinking middle class. But some people have the right idea, really - just drop the registration and ignore the law.
It's a stupid one, especially because it has little effect. Even worse, it's applied in areas where there's a pollution 'problem' and cars aren't the major source. IIRC, some midwestern state has it because frequent forrest fires put parts of it on the EPA's shitlist. It's pollitically convient to do this to car drivers, though mostly because not enough stand up to this bullshit.
Out of curiosity, what size is your boat? Most of them don't reach the gallons-per-minute mark. The biggest containerships do about 28 gallons per minute.
Sure there is: better gas mileage and longer life of the vehicle.
What's ridiculous is when we had emissions testing in Michigan, the most pollution producing vehicles, those which were 10 years or older, were exempt.
Of course, it's only ridiculous if you believe that the purpose of emission testing is for pollution control and not to line the pockets of certain people.
I keep my vehicle in tune but I still am a strong supporter of emissions testing, even though it costs me. Why - because although the majority of people would keep their cars clean, a fairly sizeable minority of people do not.
I see them all the time, these are the young kids, college students, Mexicans doing migrant working, you name it, tooling down the road belching smoke, oil and you name it. The very bottom feeders of this group are hopeless - these are the people who buy cars that are in the $300 pricerange and they don't use them - they consume them. They just keep putting gas in the thing until it stops on the side of the road, whereupon they leave it for the city to come pick up, and go buy another $300 beater and repeat the process. Those people are going to keep doing what they do as long as people with old cars sell them through private sale rather than driving them to the wrecking yard.
But, the next tier up are the people who buy $1000 cars hoping to get a couple years use out of them. What invariably happens is the thing runs for 6 months then something goes wrong - maybe it's mistuned and runs too lean and burns up the catcon which plugs up - and these people are the ones that take the tailpipe off and pound a long rod up into the catcon to smash apart everything in it to remove the blockage. Why - because they have enough of a cash stream to pay $25 a week in gas to fill the car up - but they don't have the savings to drop into a proper vehicle repair. And if they get that money they are going to dump the car to the Mexicans and go buy another $1000 vehicle.
Now, you can argue all you want but the fact of the matter is both these groups of car owners are a drag on society. The bottom feeders spend our tax dollars to haul away their cars. And the next tier up dump tons of pollutants into the air the rest of us breathe. Emissions testing has the effect of reducing the time that the next tier holds onto their vehicles, and gets those vehicles into the wreckers faster.
That is dumb. In Oregon, even 25 year old vehicles aren't exempt.
Well, what the hell, why don't we just kill off all those "bottom feeders" who are too poor to afford a decent car? There you go, problem solved. After all, they're just the dregs of society, right? Too stupid or too lacking in ambition to make the kind of money and be able to by the kinds of things that the "good folk" do, might as well just get rid of them. Hey, they're probably using up a lot of other resources that should be reserved for the "good folk" too, and they probably don't bathe as often or dress as well as the "good folk" so they're just stinking up the place and creating an eyesore. Yeah, get rid of them.
Of course, you'll have to fetch your own pizza, Mickey Ds and Burger King will go out of business because they can't find any employees, you'll have to clean your own toilets and office, pick your own vegetables, etc. etc. But, that's OK, right?
What's that? You make your money from BK franchises? So sorry, go stand in line with the other "bottom feeders", you'll be broke soon and the rest of the "good folk" shouldn't have to wait for you to go completely down the tubes before putting an end to your wasting of their resources.
I got a better idea - instead of bending everyone over at the inspection station every year, why not go clean up a few coal burning power plants? NY state's cleaning one up, they claim the emissions gains are equal to removing *every* diesel vehicle registered in state from the road.
That's why E checks are bullshit today - cars aren't the big polluters, stationary sources are. You can't buy a car without feedback fuel controls or one that's not garrunteed to be clean for 100,000 miles or so, yet even home heating systems don't have to meet much (if any) standards, and have no such controls. Heck, even lawnmowers don't, and you'd think EFI would be a BIG PLUS there, given how crappy the average mower runs (imagine real starting on the first pull, every time, and better economy, not to mention a boatload cleaner, AND better performance)
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