(Originally posted on LiveJournal.)

I’ve had a couple of conversations in the last few days about car safety inspections. One of them got me curious enough to go research things a little, and what I found scared me.

I was floored when I found out that Georgia does not require an annual safety inspection before renewing a registration. North Carolina does, and I’d come to think of that as the normal course of things. But Georgia only requires emissions inspections in some cases. Emissions inspections don’t test brakes, windshield wipers, lights or steering. Georgia doesn’t maintain minimum standards for these items at all.

So I looked around online and discovered that most states are like Georgia. No safety inspections are required. In other words, a car that can’t be stopped or can’t be seen at night is still perfectly street legal.

This scares me. It should scare any reasonable person who is in a car on a regular basis (regardless of whether they are driving).

I’ve heard people make snide comments about the North Carolina safety inspections being a case of “nanny government” but I disagree: an unsafe car does not just endanger the passengers inside the car. It endangers the passengers in the cars around it as well. There’s a well-known saying about your right to swing your arm ending at the next person’s nose. The inspections are a matter of public safety, and that falls within the government’s mandate. And let’s face it: people often don’t maintain their cars beyond the bare minimum needed to keep them on the road.

I don’t know any North Carolina drivers who truly object to the inspections. They’re a pain to deal with sometimes, but most people see it as just another part of car ownership. Everyone has to do it, but everyone benefits because it means fewer unsafe cars on the road. It’s easy enough to have a wreck in a safe car. There’s no need to risk even more wrecks by permitting unsafe cars on the road.

Yes, I know that the inspections don’t take all unsafe cars off the road. But states without inspections don’t take any unsafe cars off the road. I’ll take “some” over “none” any day.