Brown: Put the brakes on car inspections

Being an Ohioan isn’t easy. My friends here often take jabs at my roots, citing some of… Being an Ohioan isn’t easy. My friends here often take jabs at my roots, citing some of Ohio’s famous faults, such as Cleveland ­— otherwise known as “the mistake on the lake” — and its sports teams, or the infamous environmental catastrophe when the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969.

To retaliate, I’ve occasionally sent these same friends pictures of the Buckeye state’s forbidden fruit like the beer and liquor aisle at Wal-Mart back home. I mostly try to disregard the foibles of our respective states, though.

That is, until now. I say that primarily because a questionable lapse in Pennsylvania’s state regulations could have killed me a few weeks ago.

Let me explain. Last August, I purchased a used car to replace the aging jalopy I had owned since high school. The previous owner of my new car babied it, having it inspected just before I bought it.

While purchasing a used car is always a gamble, I bought into the popularized claim that Pennsylvania’s supposedly rigorously inspected vehicle market would supply me with a better car than Ohio could. We don’t have inspections back home.

I had nothing to worry about — or so I thought. But a month later, most of the brake components failed and needed to be replaced.

And this month, the brakes stopped working again, forcing me to replace almost every other previously unchanged part. Since September, I’ve effectively doubled my investment in the car.

Fortunately, my car’s brake lines and wheel cylinders burst in a parking lot, leaving me there to roll to a standstill. Had I been in traffic at the time, I might not have come away unscathed.

According to a study by Cambridge Systematics, a transportation analysis company that has worked to analyze the effectiveness of Pennsylvania car inspections, the state’s vehicle safety inspections avert between 115 and 169 fatal accidents annually. What might not be obvious is that, unlike the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Cambridge Systematics is a for-profit institution.

I tried several times to contact Jay Evans, a top consultant for Cambridge Systematics in the Mid-Atlantic Region, to see how his company could report its findings without bias, but I received no comment. Of the sources the corporation cited in the report, 12 of the 17 were more than 15 years old. In fact, only four of their sources were even from research conducted after 2000.

Washington’s city council couldn’t justify keeping its similar program, so it stopped inspecting vehicles last October. The phaseout came both as a cost-cutting measure and because DC Council couldn’t conclude that its 81-point inspection really kept motorists safer, according to The Washington Post.

“It’s a really burdensome requirement on drivers that has no effect,” the District’s DMV director, Lucinda Babers, told The Washington Post.

It seems Pennsylvania chooses to keep these inspections not because they serve to better the driving environment. Rather, they can generate near $250 million for the state, according to a study released by PennDOT, They can also send tax revenue back to the state and municipalities by requiring often expensive and unnecessary vehicle repairs.

While I’ve heard people say that Ohioans drive death traps, I can verify that my old car’s brakes never went kaput on me without notice, nor had the car ever been a safety hazard.

If Pennsylvania really wanted its drivers to be safer, a more effective approach might be to improve driver education — not mandating inspections. Just as you go to the doctor when you’re sick, individuals will have the sense to go to the mechanic when their cars are no longer roadworthy.

According to a 2009 study from GMAC Insurance surveying general driving knowledge, Pennsylvania ranks as possessing the 16th-worst drivers in the nation — a rating lower than Ohio, believe it or not. Pennsylvanians answered just 75.4 percent of the questions correctly.

That means that there’s a good chance that overconfident drivers most likely won’t have the slightest clue what to do if they ever encounter a catastrophic mechanical failure on the open road. Somehow, that doesn’t give me a sense of security.

However, rather than mitigate the lack of driver preparation, Pennsylvania will continue to hide behind the myth that vehicle inspections really make everyone safer. Much like what I’ve encountered on the local level here, the state’s philosophy seems to be that its legislators think they know better than its citizens when it comes to what’s best for society.

So Pennsylvanians, please forgive me. In most ways, I like this state much more than Ohio. But if ever I had to choose between a few sports championships or dealing with less government bullying, I think I’d choose the latter.

Your car stop working, too? Call AAA or e-mail Jacob at jeb110@pitt.edu.