Text 13624, 60 rader
Skriven 2011-01-15 10:19:26 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
  Kommentar till text 13610 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
Ärende: Taxes
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Roy Witt wrote to Kurt Weiske on Friday January 14 2011 at 11:20:

[In California...]
RW> If your vehicle doesn't pass inspection, you're obligated to take it
RW> to a state-authorized referee facility that will determine the cause.
RW> Once you go thru this process, your vehicle will then be checked every
RW> year instead of every other. If it can't be fixed, the referee will
RW> make a determination of whether or not it needs to be scraped.

Here in Germany, where a good deal more than merely a computer analysis is made
(brake tests, lighting, play in the steering mechanism, wheel suspension, oil
leaks, exhaust leaks and a lot more), your car is either passed "without
defects", passed "with minor defects" (which you are legally required to
correct immediately after the inspection, things like burnt-out light bulbs),
or not passed when "major defects" such as play in the steering system or wheel
suspension are determined.

Then it's only a question as to whether the inspector thinks the defects are so
serious that they would endanger you and other drivers. If they're considered
repairable and not life threatening, you are not passed, and are required to
return to the testing facility within, I believe, two weeks with the repaired
car for re-inspection.

It's generally the best idea to appear for an inspection without previously
having anything repaired or inspected at a commercial garage, since the latter
could "repair" things that don't really need repairing, at your expense - it's
usually best to just let the test inspectors do their job and then make
necessary repairs. That way you can specify precisely what you need repairing
(on the basis of the test results), which is cheaper than a simple "Hey, just
make sure this heap passes the inspection".

If the car is in a truly dangerous condition (frame rusted through at critical
places, brakes ineffective, suspension totally broken and the like), the
inspector will take it out of service then and there, and you can call a cab to
get home. This is quite rare nowadays, as people generally know when a car is
in such poor shape that it won't get through an inspection, but it does happen
occasionally.

After that, you must remove the car from the testing facility by having it
towed away. You are not allowed to drive it and if you were to try, you could
be arrested.

You naturally can repair it, if possible, and have it re-inspected, but if it's
dangerous enough that the inspectors take it out of service right at the
testing facility, the condition is generally so bad that a repair is not
economical.

The inspectors are engineers specially trained for the job, and are quite
pragmatic - if they say something is dangerous, you can usually take their word
for it. I might add that they are rotated from testing facility to testing
facility, so that you only rarely will have the same inspector twice. That's to
prevent any "friendships" between those being inspected and the inspectors,
that could possibly lead to an influence on the test results. It also prevents
animosities between those tested and the inspectors, which also could affect
the test results.

Cheers, Bob

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