(The Center Square) — There’s an annual occurrence for car owners in the commonwealth that should be included in Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s regulation-busting agenda for his last year in office, according to a Virginia think tank.
Mandatory vehicle inspections simply don’t improve highway safety in any “statistically significant” way, Research Fellow Joshua Devamithran argues in an article for the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.
Virginia is one of just 15 states – down from 31 in 1975 – still requiring its residents to get one. The inspections are meant to prevent component failure, but component failure is only responsible for at most 2% of crashes, Devamithran wrote, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“It seems the benefits of mandatory inspection programs for roadway safety are indiscernible in the data, at least in part because the programs aim to mitigate an agent of vehicle crashes that in reality, is at cause in only a tiny proportion crashes,” Devamithran wrote. “Then, there is little to no evidence that the inspections eliminate or significantly lower equipment failure related accidents.”
In Virginia, most vehicles require an annual $20 inspection. Residents cannot update their license or registration without a current inspection, and they risk a ticket and a $30 fine if they drive with an expired one.
Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam attempted to abolish mandatory annual vehicle inspections for Virginians in 2020 and, while legislators did consider a compromise bill that would have shifted inspections to once every two years, the proposal failed and the law remained unchanged.
Youngkin has established an Office of Regulatory Management and earlier attempted to rid Virginia of its annual car tax, but Devamithran urges him to do as Northam did and champion the inspection’s elimination, as well.
“The principle is simple: In the absence of clear evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of a regulation in meeting its stated goal, that regulation should be eliminated,” Devamithran wrote.