Car Safety Checks an Idea Past Its Time

Dear Street Smart:

The state needs a mechanical inspection law for vehicles. I see vehicles every day that should be banned from the highways.

There are minor problems like malfunctioning signal lights and taillights, bald tires, bad brakes. In addition, I have seen cars traveling at freeway speeds with bad front or rear axle bearings, no fenders, cracked windshields and other problems. These cars could lose a wheel at high speeds and cause an accident.

Fix-it tickets presented by the police are not the answer because it’s not an enforcement priority for them, and the state does not have money to reinstitute vehicle inspection points along the highways.

If this state had a tough inspection law, 10% to 20% of the vehicles currently on the highways would not be allowed. But members of the state Legislature will not vote for a mandatory vehicle inspection law because they do not want to lose votes.

Tom Szwajkos, Laguna Niguel

California once had a random vehicle inspection program. Between 1956 and 1974, about 500 California Highway Patrol personnel conducted snap roadside inspections on about 15% of the state’s cars and trucks each year.

It was abruptly halted for cars because authorities felt that the program, which cost about $11 million a year, was reaping insufficient benefits, said Sam Haynes, a CHP spokesman in Sacramento. The inspection program is still in operation for big-rig trucks, which are considered a greater safety hazard because of their immense size.

Haynes said it would cost upward of $180 million annually to reinstitute a safety inspection program for cars. And that’s if only 15% of the state’s 25 million vehicles were checked.

But there are ways around such a hefty price tag. The state could institute a program requiring motorists to pay extra for certified mechanics to conduct safety inspections along with biennial smog checks.

The Legislature has considered adopting a safety-check program in recent years, but several issues have gotten in the way, said Kate McGuire, spokeswoman for the state Bureau of Automotive Repair, which oversees smog checks.

For starters, a 1989 federal report concluded that safety inspections should be incorporated into smog checks only if they add 10% or less to the cost. McGuire said the typical smog check costs $30, meaning a mechanic would have to be willing to check the brakes, lights and other equipment for a paltry $3. In California, no mechanic would be willing to do the extra work for such wages, she said.

Nonetheless, the issue came up with a bill recently sponsored by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). It died when questions were raised about the state’s liability if a vehicle passed the safety check and then suffered a mechanical breakdown that led to an accident.

Dear Street Smart:

With meters going in on ramps leading to the Riverside Freeway from the Corona Expressway and Green River Drive, the only ramps without meters on the Riverside Freeway will be those at Lakeview Avenue, Imperial Highway, Weir Canyon Road and Gypsum Canyon Road.

It’s obvious that a major cause of the evening traffic jam is the unbroken stream of cars cascading onto the freeway from the eastbound on-ramps of Weir Canyon Road and Gypsum Canyon Road. With that in mind, it would seem that the California Department of Transportation should put the metering of those ramps high on its priority list.

Is there any defensible reason that it has not done so already?

Edwin L. Green, Anaheim

Those missing ramp meters will be blinking red and green at you in 1992. Caltrans officials say the meters will be installed as part of a separate project in six to nine months.

But don’t expect miracles. Ramp meters can only do so much good when it comes to curbing freeway congestion.

The only thing that will truly get traffic moving along that troubled swath of asphalt is the long-anticipated construction of a network of car-pool and toll lanes in the center median of the freeway.