My state use to have emissions and safety inspections. It was like a 600 page pdf for all the safety stuff that had pretty annual updates. People would consistently work around it though. A handful of years ago they voted to kill off the safety part under the guise that it would be cheaper for residents. What really happened is everybody and I mean everybody just raised their emissions testing price to what it used to be for both. Safety took 15-30 minutes to do as they had to crawl around and poke and prod a ton of places. Emissions they just plug in the computer and 2-3 minutes later you’re done. So workload decreased and the price stayed exactly the same…

Sure, now residents don’t have to swap wheels(tires that extend past the body is a super common mod that was an instant fail) and other things to pass safety every year so that surely saves cost if they were paying somebody to do it. Also the cost of actually fixing things like replacing bald tires and burnt out lights.

The amount of cars with no brake lights, treadless tires, etc. is so much higher. Was walking through my work parking lot and one car’s tire had the steel cords showing…oof.