What’s conservative about ending auto safety inspections but still charging the fees?
Conservatives often rail against certain requirements as excessive government overreach, especially if it involves a mandatory fee or tax.
Often, this editorial board would concur if a compelling reason can’t be made.
But frankly, we can’t find a compelling reason to do away with mandatory auto inspections in Texas at a time when our roads are getting more and more crowded.
Nonetheless, the Texas Legislature has placed a bill on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk to do away with Texas’ required annual vehicle safety inspections, but not the accompanying inspection fees. I nstead, the safety inspection fee that the state currently collects from drivers would roll over into a new charge you’ll pay to register your car so that the state does not lose millions of dollars from fees needed to fund transportation projects.
So much for transparency in governing. If the benefit or obligation were to go away, so should the fee, right?
Let’s be clear, we think that ending the inspection program is a bad idea and urge the governor to veto this bill.
Authored by state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, House Bill 3297 is the latest effort from conservatives in the Legislature to end the safety inspection program.
The common complaint is that the inspection program doesn’t improve road safety, rewards fraud in the inspection system and burdens rural Texans who may live miles away from the nearest inspection station.
As during previous legislative sessions when similar measures to kill safety inspections fell short, the debate again pits mechanics and state inspection operations against free-market conservatives and libertarians.
The issue should be less about free-choice, personal responsibility and modest inconvenience and more about collective responsibility to make shared roads safer, or at least not more dangerous.
National studies on the effectiveness of safety inspection post mixed conclusions.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Transportation Research, which studied the safety issue for the Texas Department of Public Safety in 2018, found that mandatory inspections continue to detect safety problems and suggested that lawmakers consider expanding the list of items that would be checked during an inspection.
Fatalities and injuries were significantly higher for crashes involving vehicles with safety defects than those without safety defects, the researchers noted.
Those findings haven’t deterred lawmakers from trying to sunset auto safety inspections.
We all know that there are too many poorly maintained vehicles on the road, that inspection fraud is a problem and that most of us would rather do something else than wait to have our vehicles inspected.
But the response to fraud should be to prosecute the fraud, not nix safety inspections.
That is as illogical and irresponsible as repealing speed limits because there are speeders.
Texas vehicle safety inspections are as much for the benefit of drivers in the other lanes as they are for our own safety.
Texas is growing, and drivers are keeping cars longer.
Texas should keep its auto safety inspection program and crack down on fraudsters who would undermine it.
The state should be part of the solution, not a contributor to the problem.
