At one time I would have agreed that emissions testing was a good thing, but that was back in the carburetor days when mechanics, both shade tree and "professionals" (I use that term loosely) could easily fiddle with the mixture and cause your car to spew out lots of harmful stuff. But since the mid-80's, fuel injection has been computer controlled and you really can't fiddle much. I guess you could argue "what about old cars" or "what about cars with problems". I'd argue that these are few and far between and those that do have issues aren't driven much and it's the average emissions that count.

And safety inspections? That was a joke way back when I lived in Western NY State. Most of my High School friends cars passed the local safety inspections even though you could see the pavement passing under your feet as you were driving down the road! And those that were too far gone were taken care of with a quick application of Bondo, maybe some plywood and spray paint. And I know from experience that a stop sign is a perfect drop in for the front section of a VW floor pan! So, just how safe is a unibody car that has half the steel rotted away????? But, hey, at least the brake pads had more than 25% left in them!

These days emissions testing and safety inspections are more about revenue than safety or emissions.

Tom
www.towercooler.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Hoffman [mailto:hhoffman@ip-solutions.net] 
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 10:54 PM
To: Tom Hargrave
Cc: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Failed emissions testing

Not for nothing but how can no emissions testing or a annual safety
inspection be a good thing?

On Thu, 2010-12-30 at 22:26 -0600, Tom Hargrave wrote:
> I sure am glad that Alabama has NO EMISSIONS TESTING OR ANNUAL SAFETY
> INSPECTION!
>