This morning I went to get my vehicle emission inspection and was happy to see that, for once, I hadn’t showed up at a time when the entire world was getting emission inspections. I only had to wait behind one car before being non-greeted by the surly high-school dropout working my lane. She swiped my credit card and then drove my car to the far end for the “inspection”.
In days of yore they’d hook up a tube and funnel system to the exhaust to test for pollutant levels higher than normal. Those were the days. As long as the exhaust system on the car worked, the tube’n'funnel seemed like an honest way to test for pollutants. The last two cars I drove, however, did not have exhaust systems that worked. My parent’s van had a problem with it’s exhaust, I think the manifold was cracked when I took it in to be tested, and because no exhaust was going into the tube’n'funnel there were no pollutants going into the tube’n'funnel, so I passed. My next car, an 87 Accord, had an exhaust system that was completely rusted from tailpipe to manifold, and wasn’t even connected to the exhaust manifold anymore. It sounded like I had one of those stupid fart-pipes on my car, but I didn’t have to pay $200 to get it to sound like that. Idiots. It also passed with flying colors.
Today they only use the tube’n'funnel system for cars with 4WD, AWD, or trucks over 10,000 pounds. All the other cars get a little gadget plugged into their dashboard or engine to take a reading from the onboard computer. The surly young woman who was checking my car was kneeling on the ground leaning into my car trying to find a place to plug in the gadget. She was contorting herself in every direction to try to find a place to plug this thing in. I guess she didn’t know I was watching her because she eventually gave up without ever plugging the thing in. Then she printed out my receipt, told me my car passed and said I didn’t have to come back for two years.
Now I have a dilemma. Do I call someone to say, “Hey, your employees are idiots. My car wasn’t even tested.” and wait for them to tell me to come back in and be tested again? Or do I keep my mouth shut and consider the $14 fee a lost cause?
Stupid goddamned state government.
