Let’s Rip This Instead!
The case against Maine’s vehicle inspection mandate 

By Peter Zinn

Earlier this year, I noticed the annual inspection sticker on my car had expired the previous month. So I drove to a state-licensed inspection station which, for the purposes of this story, I’ll call Shop A. 

The mechanic at Shop A said my car needed new axle boots and tie-rod ends. It was understood that if I bought them from him, it would pass inspection. Including parts and labor, the repairs came to $225, plus $18.50 for the inspection, so I told him to go ahead. But after that work was finished, the mechanic noticed the airbag light was on. The shop didn’t have the equipment necessary to diagnose the cause of this illumination, so they were unable to give me a sticker after all. 

Worse, in accordance with a law passed a couple years ago, the mechanic ripped my expired sticker in half. Driving away, I felt like a fugitive behind the wheel, the irrefutable evidence of my crime stuck to the windshield like a scarlet letter, hovering above my forehead for all to see. 

Enter the mechanic at Shop B. He switched off the airbag light for a mere $450, but then discovered my car also needed new brake pads and rotors in order to pass inspection, and he said there were holes in the rear strut towers. The estimate for the additional repairs: $700. I told this mechanic I didn’t have $700, then forked over $450 for the favor of having the airbag light turned off, along with another $18.50 for a second failed inspection, and headed to Shop C.

Shop C is the kind of garage everyone finds themselves at during one desperate time or another: a compound of beat-up cars at the end of a dirt road, walls covered in grease and porn and a calendar of the year 1978. There’s no waiting room at Shop C — the mechanic let me watch as he inspected my vehicle. He checked the brake lights and the turn signals, then put the car on a lift and made sure the wheels were screwed on tight. 

“Looks OK,” he said. “But I’d fix that oil leak if I were you.” He estimated that repair would cost about $200, but passed my car without it, anyway. I told him if I ever do get the oil leak fixed, I’ll most assuredly have him do the job.  

A week after leaving Shop C, my tailpipe broke in half. I headed to Meineke for a $185 patch job — the mechanic apparently didn’t notice any other problems worth mentioning — and three hours later, I was back on the road. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking: my car is an old junker held together with duct tape and bubblegum. In fact, I drive a late-model Subaru with under 100,000 miles on it, new tires, and brakes less than two years old. 

And I know something else you’re probably thinking: the same thing happened to me! 

Granted, the details are different. But who hasn’t driven a vehicle that seemed to be in perfectly good condition to a garage for its annual inspection, only to be told the state considers your ride too dangerous to drive and you have to spend hundreds of dollars or more to be certified safe again? And how many of you then went to another garage, where the cost and type of repairs needed to make your vehicle legal were significantly different? 

It’s like playing the state’s anti-lottery: you could lose a little or lose a lot.   

“John” owns a small and reputable repair shop in Windham, but like most mechanics I spoke with for this story, he declined to comment on the record. The day I visited, John had just explained to a woman that her car would need $1,500 worth of repairs to get a new sticker, and due to corrosion to related parts of the car, there was a good chance those repairs wouldn’t hold up until the next inspection. “I do a lot of consoling,” he said. “People can’t always afford it, but they’re required to have their car stickered.” 

Maine is among the shrinking minority of states that mandate annual or biennial safety inspections for personal passenger vehicles. Lawmakers in most states have repealed or significantly curtailed inspection programs in light of research that questions their effectiveness as a means to reduce accidents. Between 1980 and 1993, the number of states mandating annual inspections dropped from 30 to 23. There are currently 14 that require annual inspections, and four states (plus the District of Columbia) with biennial programs (inspection required every two years), according to the latest lists compiled online.    

Maine’s had an inspection program of one kind or another since the 1940s. Prior to 1982, safety inspections were required every six months, but until recently, state lawmakers had shown little inclination to further relax the law. To the contrary, in 2006 the state approved an updated inspection manual that added several new criteria, including requirements that vehicles have a hood (How’d that one slip by for six decades?) and functioning windshield wipers. 

Earlier this year, a bill to move Maine to a biennial program passed in the House by a wide margin, said Bryan Kaenrath (D-South Portland), its sponsor. The legislation was subsequently pulled when state Department of Environmental Protection officials said its passage could endanger federal funding tied to annual emissions checks in Cumberland County. Kaenrath, a 25-year-old just elected to a second term, intends to submit a modified version of his earlier bill, crafted to avoid that loss of funding, next session.   

The effectiveness of Maine’s inspection regime is questionable, but no one doubts the system is riddled with fraud. 

Example: A week after my experience at Shop A, the service manager called to ask if I still needed a sticker. When I told him my car had passed inspection elsewhere, he got angry and accused me of having paid one of his mechanics to illegally sticker my car off the clock. In other words, he was accusing me, the customer, and one of his own employees of breaking state law. That’s customer service! 

Furthermore, this sprawling, under-regulated, for-profit system imposes an economic burden that falls disproportionately on those who can least afford or understand it. 

Owners of older cars and trucks who can’t afford a new vehicle typically have progressively more, and more expensive, repair bills they must pay to pass inspection. If you lack basic auto-mechanical knowledge or skills, you’ll pay more to drive legally than someone who can, say, replace their own scratched headlamp cover. People new to Maine often pay more to drive legally than savvy or connected locals who know which garages are lax and which are strict.          

Short of outright repeal, there are reforms that could give Mainers some relief from the anxiety and expense our inspection law creates. First we need to have an honest discussion of how the system really works. It turns out that’s no easy task.          

 

Inspecting the inspectors 

While researching this story, I came to realize the paranoia I felt while driving with a ripped sticker is nothing compared to the fear licensed inspectors wrestle with all the time.  

I had little luck getting mechanics and shop owners to speak candidly about inspections. Sure, a reporter can get boilerplate quotes about the importance of vehicle maintenance, and every garage owner says they follow the letter of the law. But as several explained to me when I pressed for more details, the inspection regime creates a catch-22 that makes it wiser to just keep your mouth shut. 

Mechanics who boast of performing thorough, by-the-book inspections risk losing customers. Conversely, a shop that lets it be known they don’t follow all the rules risks attracting the scrutiny of state police, who can suspend or strip shops and mechanics of their lucrative license to perform this work.

“My vehicle inspection station doesn’t go by the book, thank god,” wrote an anonymous poster on the conservative political Web site As Maine Goes. “It’s honk the horn, turn on the lights, test the brakes, and sticker on. No, I won’t tell you where I inspect.”

This paranoia festers despite the fact the state has relatively few people monitoring its inspection program and violations rarely result in serious consequences. The Maine State Police have one sergeant and 10 civilian inspectors paid to respond to complaints and monitor the work of about 7,500 licensed technicians at Maine’s roughly 2,400 privately owned and operated inspection stations. 

“Given [state] budget constraints… the shops are, to a certain degree, policing themselves,” said Boyd Marley, a Democratic House member from Portland who chaired the Legislature’s Transportation Committee before being ousted by term limits this year. 

Maine State Police Lt. Christopher Grotton heads the unit that oversees the inspection program. He said most of the civilian inspectors’ work is routine, like checking to see if a shop has the proper tools and equipment to perform the work and is employing licensed mechanics. Grotton added that on rare occasions the inspectors will use video surveillance and other undercover tactics to nab unscrupulous garages. 

Within the past year, a repair shop in Portland was caught up-selling customers by exaggerating the work necessary for their vehicles to pass inspection. But the punishment in this case was a slap on the wrist: the shop was given a warning, and its owner promised to fire any mechanics found taking advantage of customers in the future. (Grotton declined to name the business, but said it was part of a national chain or franchise.)

According to Lt. Grotton, in 2007 the state suspended the licenses of 51 stations and 81 technicians, and issued 250 warnings. Instances of licenses being revoked, however, are extremely low: about one or two per year, he said.

Mechanics who undercharge customers by ignoring potential safety violations risk more serious punishment. “If you don’t scrutinize every car, you’ll get crushed,” John told me. “Suppose there’s a fatal accident involving vehicle malfunction. The state checks who put that sticker on the car, and you better hope to hell it isn’t one of yours.”

The state has gotten more serious about holding mechanics responsible in these cases. A revision to the law in 2006 now requires inspectors to print their full name in addition to signing the sticker.  

Given Maine’s harsh winters — heavily salted roads, potholes and frost heaves — it’s not uncommon for parts to deteriorate after they’ve been inspected and deemed safe. (An alternative to road salt considered by state lawmakers last year is even more corrosive to brake lines and undercarriages, Marley noted.) The possibility mechanics and shops could be held liable if post-inspection problems contribute to an accident provides another strong incentive (besides profit) to refuse to sticker otherwise passable vehicles. 

Over the past 18 months there were four fatal crashes in Maine resulting from brake failure. All four vehicles had a current inspection sticker. (It’s unclear from the records whether that led to legal action against the licensing shops.) 

The fact legally inspected vehicles still experience mechanical failures is more than a worry for mechanics. It’s part of the argument against having an inspection program in the first place.  

 

Fractions of a percent

Maine’s inspection program supposedly exists for one central reason: to make us safer on the road. Accordingly, one would assume states with inspection programs have fewer accidents caused by vehicle malfunction than those that don’t. But as studies and statistics indicate, that’s not the case.

A study published in the Southern Economic Journal in 1999 examined data from all 50 states over a 12-year period, between 1981 and 1993, and found “no evidence that inspections significantly reduce fatality or injury rates.”  

One of the reasons is intuitive. “[D]rivers have a strong incentive to perform maintenance to provide for their own safety,” the study’s authors wrote. In other words, the risk of serious injury or death posed by driving with faulty brakes is a stronger incentive to get them fixed than the risk of getting a ticket for sporting an expired sticker.  

The SEJ study also noted that inspections “can at best prevent only a small fraction of accidents since most accidents” — about 99 percent — “do not involve mechanical failure.” And “annual inspection may fail to eliminate even the small fraction of accidents caused by mechanical failure,” because an inspection “ensures only that tested parts function on the date of inspection.” 

The study stated what everyone around here already knows, but most are afraid to admit: “inspectors can fail, intentionally or unintentionally, to report defects.” The authors cited a Pennsylvania study in 1980 that found no type of inspection station (dealerships, chains or independent garages) managed to find more than half of the defects in a sample of vehicles. 

“Inspectors may fail to report defects to minimize customer hassle and increase the number of inspections performed,” the study’s authors wrote. Citing another study, they added, “motorists tend to patronize repair shops with a low failure rate on inspections.”

Lt. Grotton estimates that 80 percent of Maine vehicles pass inspection in a given year without needing any repairs. A representative at the Midas on Forest Avenue said about half pass without additional work. John, the Windham shop owner, put the figure at 30 percent. 

“If you look hard enough, you can always find something wrong,” one of John’s mechanics said. 

Comparing more recent accident statistics indicates the SEJ study’s conclusions still hold true. 

Connecticut tests cars for emissions, but not for safety. That state has three times the population Maine has, and in 2006, it had roughly twice the number of reported accidents: about 31,000 for us, 72,000 for them. Of the accidents in Maine, 361 of them (or 1.1 percent) were related to vehicle malfunction. Connecticut had 489 accidents due to vehicle malfunction that year (.68 percent of their total). None of those 489 accidents were fatal. (The Maine Department of Transportation could not provide information on fatalities due to accidents caused by vehicle malfunction in 2006.) 

In reality, Maine drivers share the road with untold thousands of uninspected (and intentionally under-inspected) vehicles, like all the cars and trucks from Connecticut and the other two-thirds of states without sticker programs. Drivers from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick supposedly follow their provinces’ laws and get annual checks, but those from Quebec and Ontario aren’t subject to periodic inspections.   

Add to this the loopholes in Maine’s law. For example, many of the  oldest vehicles on our roads don’t need to pass an annual inspection. Cars over 25 years old that qualify for “antique” license plates are exempt from the inspection requirement on the (often mistaken) assumption those vehicles are not driven on a routine basis. Thousands of other Maine vehicles are exempt simply because they’re driven on islands. In Portland, a car used to run errands around town must be inspected; the same car used to run errands on Peaks Island does not.   

If the percentage of accidents caused by mechanical malfunctions wasn’t so miniscule, this might be cause for concern.  

 

Roads not taken

In an attempt to provide more fairness and consistency to the inspection process, New Jersey has government-run testing facilities. If a car fails inspection, the owner is given a list of what needs to be fixed and can then go wherever they choose to have the repairs done. 

John was quick to dismiss this alternative. “Good mechanics make between $75,000 and $80,000 a year,” he said. “The state can’t afford to match that. If they’re paying someone $6 an hour to inspect cars, think what kind of job they’ll do.”

Dan Ridlon, service manager at Casco Bay Ford, disagreed on that point. He said inspecting a car isn’t particularly difficult and state employees could easily be trained to do the work. The real question, said Ridlon, is whether the state could run such a system. “You pay taxes here,” he joked. “Think they’d be able to handle it?”

Voit Ritch, owner of Autowerkes Maine, said the bureaucracy of a state-run inspection program would cause more problems than it solved. “There would be long lines,” he said. “It would be hard to find an inspection center.”   

New Jersey is also among the states that require a biennial sticker. Rep. Kaenrath doesn’t support repeal — “I recognize there’s a need for [inspections],” he said — but accident data from other states has convinced him Mainers can at least go two years between mandated checks. “A lot of states with winter conditions similar to Maine’s — places like Idaho, Iowa and North Dakota — don’t have vehicle inspections, and people there manage to drive fine,” Kaenrath said. 

The federal funding snag resulted because vehicles in Cumberland County must also undergo annual emissions checks (performed during safety inspections) as part of an agreement the state struck with federal environmental regulators last decade, after Maine scrapped the disastrous Car Test emission-inspection system. Both Marley and Kaenrath said a compromise measure that maintains the emission-check requirement in Cumberland County while making safety inspections biennial would almost certainly pass.

There was “a ton” of public comment on the earlier bill, Kaenrath said, “probably 90 percent of it” in favor of going biennial. “This is an issue a lot of people are frustrated about,” he said, noting that experiences like mine are a common complaint. “There’s so much inconsistency out there,” he said. 

Some states that require safety and emissions testing offer low-income drivers some form of assistance. New Hampshire and Connecticut offer a one-time “economic hardship waiver” to vehicle owners whose cars fail emissions tests and need expensive repairs. Workers at D.M.V.’s in New Hampshire and Connecticut expressed surprise when I told them Maine does not offer similar types of assistance.

With our state facing another big budget deficit in turbulent economic times, a waiver program that promises to decrease state revenues and increase administrative costs is unlikely to find a receptive audience in Augusta. 

Repeal could also be a tough sell. The state gets $2.50 of every inspection fee, netting over $3 million annually for its highway fund. That’s chump change given the fund’s total budget, which exceeds $350 million this fiscal year. But coupled with concerns, founded or unfounded, about vehicle safety, the argument against repeal is still strong. 

Mechanics and shop owners raised the specter of unsafe vehicles on our roads when Kaenrath’s bill got press last January. But before the federal funding issue surfaced, House members approved it by a two-to-one margin anyway, Kaenrath recalled.     

Prospects are good that Maine will soon require safety inspections every two years. In the meantime, we all have our tricks to get by. 

For general repairs, I take my car to a mechanic who formerly worked for a Portland dealership and now operates out of his house. His business is not licensed to sticker cars, but he did offer some advice. 

“Never get your car inspected in the winter,” he said. “Shops don’t have as much business then and they’ll fail you for anything.” 

He added that Shop B had most likely found a problem with the rear strut towers because that shop created a kit for repairing strut towers, so it was in their interest to fix as many of them as possible. 

“It’s not something most mechanics will look for,” he said. “Yes, it can be fixed. But a lot of things on cars can be fixed. It doesn’t always mean they need to be.”

 

Peter Zinn is a freelance writer. He lives in Falmouth. Bollard editor Chris Busby contributed reporting for this article.