Alexander Smeaton: Vehicle inspections do not lead to fewer crashes

To The Daily Sun,

In reading Joyce Donohue's letter supporting mandatory vehicle inspections I noticed plenty of emotion and no facts. That's most likely because the facts don't support mandatory vehicle inspections. For example:

1. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Thomas Jefferson Institute, mechanical defects are only responsible for 2%-7% of car crashes. Driver error accounts for about 94%. A North Carolina government study concluded that mechanical failure only caused 1% of auto accidents in their state.

2. There is a lack of evidence that mandatory inspections result in fewer traffic crashes. A 2015 GAO audit of state traffic safety programs found that "Existing research has been unable to establish any causal relationship" between inspection requirements and crash fatalities. This is further supported by a 2024 Danish study published in Traffic Safety Research (an interdisciplinary journal) that found no association between periodic inspections and crash risk in separate analyses of each vehicle type. The Danish researchers studied 72,089 cars, 11,289 vans, 3,101 trucks, and 1,575 buses and was case-controlled. The State of Nebraska ended its vehicle inspection requirements in 1982, and found that thereafter crash rates decreased.

It is clear that vehicle inspections do not actually increase road safety and are only imposing unnecessary burdens on Granite Staters both financially and in terms of needing to take time out of their day to get vehicles inspected. I hope most readers will choose fact over emotional fiction.

Alexander Smeaton

Laconia