Smog Check Gets a Tune-Up

It is time again for California drivers to run the obstacle course of the state’s latest Smog Check law, an unproven product of political compromise that is supposed to make it easier and cheaper for many car owners without sacrificing air quality.

There will be new exemptions for owners of new and old cars, new limits on what car owners have to spend on smog-related repair work, and subsidies for low-income drivers.

But for at least 15% of the state’s drivers the new system holds out the possibility of “consumer pingpong,” the repair industry’s term for the shuttling back and forth between the testing facilities and repair shops--a division of labor mandated under the law.

The new regulations do not go into effect until March, but drivers will begin receiving registration notices next month telling them what they will have to do to comply.

Those whose cars have been singled out by the state’s computers as high-profile polluters will have to pay a visit to one of the state’s planned new test-only centers. They will then have to take their cars to repair shops to fix whatever is wrong and return to the test-only center for a clean bill of health.

Anger over similar procedures culminated in a demonstration on the steps of the state Capitol a year ago. The system has been revised.

State officials say that referrals to test-only centers will be phased in to avoid the gridlock that occurred at testing centers last year.

But the centers are supposed to be able to test about 775,000 vehicles next year, and only about one-sixth of the facilities are up and running, according to officials of the state’s Automotive Repair Bureau.

Meanwhile, environmental groups say the amount of pollution that will be eliminated probably will fall short of the state’s obligations under the federal Clean Air Act.

“With the new exemptions granted and the complexities of the law, I doubt we’ll get out the volume [of pollutants] we need to get out,” said V. John White, an expert on air pollution and a consultant to the Sierra Club.

Officials of the auto repair industry complain that the new regulations will cost them business just as they are required to make expensive investments in smog detection equipment.

This year marks the third time since 1984, when cars first had to be tested in California, that the Smog Check law has been tinkered with. The latest overhaul, signed into law in September, offers relief for drivers in a variety of ways.

* About 30% fewer cars and trucks will have to be checked each year as a result of exemptions for the most recent four model years and for models that came out in 1973 or before.

Up to now, exemptions were granted only to pre-1966 vehicles.

The only other people who will remain exempt from the biennial Smog Check obligation are car owners living in rural areas where smog isn’t much of a problem. In those areas, cars have to be checked only when there is a change of ownership.

The theory behind the new exemptions is that new cars account for less than 1% of pollution and the older cars tend to be driven too infrequently to contribute much to the smog problem.

* The current $450 cap on smog-related repairs will be extended to the owners of so-called gross polluting vehicles--those that emit twice the allowable limit of pollution and account for about 50% of overall smog levels.

* Low-income drivers will be able to take advantage, on a one-time basis, of a repair assistance program that will limit their costs to $250, providing their income is within 175% of the federal poverty limit. That amounts to about $27,000 for a family of four.

* A fund is to be established to subsidize repairs that cost low-income owners more than $250. The money for the subsidies is to come from smog control assessments collected from out-of-state vehicles registered in California.

But the new law won’t make it any easier to pass a smog test.

In the most polluted areas of the state, including Los Angeles and much of the rest of Southern California, the law for the first time requires use of diagnostic equipment, called dynamometers, which will measure emissions under actual driving conditions. In addition, the equipment is designed to measure oxides of nitrogen, the components of smog that make the air look brown. These gases have not thoroughly been tested up to now.

For the first year the dynamometers are in use, officials of the Bureau of Automotive Repair estimate that smog test failure rates may rise from around 15% to 18% to as much as 25%.

The bureau will also begin identifying, through computer analysis of Smog Check records, vehicles deemed “likely to fail.” Starting in December, the owners will be referred directly to one of the new, privately run test-only centers around the state.

Establishing the test-only centers is being done in response to criticism by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the old system, in which cars were checked and repaired at the same service stations, was ridden with fraud and incompetence.

The California Service Station and Automotive Repair Assn. estimates that about 30% of station owners who now offer Smog Check testing and repair services will go out of the Smog Check business because they won’t be able to afford the dynamometers at the same time they are losing business as a result of the new exemptions and the test-only centers.

“The test-only centers may turn out to be the Achilles’ heel of the law,” said Dennis DeCota, president of the association.

State officials admit that the centers are not opening as fast as they had hoped.

“At this point, we just don’t know what the capacity for test-only centers will be by March “ said Bob Brown, a spokesman for the bureau.

“If we don’t have the capacity to handle the full load of cars, we’ll call in the number that the test-only shops out there can handle,” Brown said.

The rest, he said, will be able to go to the same places they always have for smog checks and repairs. However, Brown said, any car found to be a gross polluter by a routine smog check must be taken to a test-only center for a post-repair certification.

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Smog Check Revisions

Several revisions to California’s Smog Check law go into effect next year. More vehicles will be exempt from smog tests, and more drivers will be able to take advantage of spending caps on smog-related repairs. But the state rules vary depending on the levels of pollution:

In the state’s most polluted areas, smog testing will become more rigorous and some cars will have to be checked at new test-only centers to certify compliance with the Smog Check law.

In less-polluted areas, motorists can continue to have their cars tested and repaired at the same facility.

In many rural areas of the state, cars don’t have to be checked until they change owners.