Posted by CGarbee on Thursday, January 13, 2005 at 12:50PM :
In Reply to: Re: In states without inspections.... posted by MoparNorm on Thursday, January 13, 2005 at 12:24PM :
The argument that was used here (in North Carolina) is that the older vehicles are on the road much less (fewer miles both as a category and on an individual vehicle basis), tend to be cared for (not talking the cheap, can't afford to fix them, but the nice resto/maintained ones which is the majority of the vehicles in this category as the parts are more difficult/expensive to find for something 35 years old...), and already are exempt from emision inspections.
As stated in an above post, you are still liable for any accident that you cause, so you still need a safe vehicle. You can still be cited for having unsafe equipment (the burnt out bulb ticket for instance...).
There were also never any real garuntee with the old law that a vehicle that passed its annual inspection would still be safe the next week...
Emision inspections are still required on the new stuff and you have to have them saftey inspected as well. These are the majority of vehicles that are out there.
As also stated on another forum, no one wants to work on the older stuff except for the folks that own it...