We’re Taking a Loser’s Gamble on the Need for Auto Safety Inspections

It’s Labor Day weekend and you’re on a hot and crowded highway. Tensions are high, traffic is slow, and you want to get home. Who would you rather have driving in the lane next to you: a sober driver with defective steering and brakes or a tipsy driver with good steering and brakes?

The answer is neither. A good driver whose car is out of control can be as dangerous as a drunk driver with good tires and new brake pads. Both are hazards; neither should be allowed on the road.

In the last decade we have seen great gains in auto safety. The campaign against drunk driving has raised public awareness and made inroads into that problem. States now have laws on seat belts and child restraints, and more and more Americans are buckling up because they know that their lives are at stake.

Yet with all the progress made, we have failed to address a major cause of unsafe driving: unsafe cars and improper and inadequate auto-safety maintenance. Too many trucks and automobiles on the road have worn brake linings, cracking belts, broken headlamps and loose steering. It is time we consider a national standard for automobile-safety inspections.

Car crashes cost Americans about $74 billion in 1986. The crashes caused more than 46,000 deaths, 3.4 million injuries and 45 million damaged cars that year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency that brings us these tragic statistics, is also responsible for auto safety, yet it has largely ignored the auto-safety inspection issue. The agency has never carried out automobile-inspection standards mandated by a 1966 highway safety law. Many of the programs supposedly designed to meet the Highway Safety Program Standard of 1966 have been half-hearted charades aimed at preserving the fiction that the safety administration had a national program and preventing the targeted states from losing Highway Safety Trust Fund payments.

With highway crashes accounting for nearly 50,000 deaths per year, it is surprising that our government has been so indifferent to the question of auto-safety inspections. Without national requirements for periodic inspections, many car owners won’t know, until it’s too late, that they are driving an unsafe vehicle.

California, our nation’s most populous state, accounts for 11.2% of the nation’s vehicles, 12% of traffic fatalities and an automobile accident claims-payment average that exceeds the national average. Yet California and 28 other states fail to require safety inspections--except on aircraft.

Recent studies conducted in Virginia and New Jersey, and others by the American Automobile Assn. in 22 states, suggest that about 3 out of 10 vehicles have serious safety-related defects. Last year the highway-safety administration reported that a high percentage of heavy trucks involved in crashes had serious safety defects. A 1977 study by the agency estimated that almost 10% percent of all accidents could have been avoided if cars and trucks were properly inspected--and that was based on old inspection technology equipment. A reduction of 9.2% in defect-caused crashes would save 4,232 lives, prevent 312,800 injuries and save $6.84 billion.

While current law requires every new vehicle to meet stringent safety performance standards before being allowed on the road, the law’s effect is weak because cars and trucks begin to deteriorate from the first time that they are driven. Since states have different inspection requirements, there’s every possibility that the car behind you on the interstate highway has not undergone a rigorous inspection in years. Moreover, there is no safety inspection requirement for the 45 million vehicles seriously crash-damaged annually once they have been repaired and returned to the road.

Besides detecting problems in individual cars, periodic inspections can also be useful in detecting patterns of defects in certain vehicle models. And as new inspection technologies are developed, inspections will become even more valuable. For example, new equipment can now detect an imbalance between the braking forces on different wheels, which can be a major safety hazard in wet weather.

Legislation calling for a comprehensive study of safety aspects by the National Academy of Sciences has been introduced in each of the past several sessions of Congress. Unfortunately, it has been routinely opposed by congressional representatives from car-manufacturing states.

If the federal government does not develop a national standard for periodic safety inspections, it will be more than a shame. It will be an unnecessary gamble with Americans’ lives. Labor Day and every holiday should be a time of enjoyment, not a time of tragedy.