Vehicle inspections small price to pay for safety on road

You can never have too much safety on the road.
The same applies to our bridges, our mines, our buildings, our water, our food and so on.
Public safety inspections are a bargain when you consider the alternative.
Once again, a bill — HB 4639 — is advancing in the Legislature that would roll back annual vehicle inspections to once every two years instead of annually.
We know, it would save vehicle owners at least $11 over those two years. Inspections cost $14 now: $3 for the sticker that supports State Police, and $11 for the garage that does the job.
HB 4639 raises the price for the biannual inspection to $17, which doubles the sticker price to $6 to keep the State Police revenue intact. The original version of the bill called for vehicle inspections once every three years, but was changed to every two years.
Thursday that bill advanced out of the House Finance Committee on a 14-10 vote and now goes to the House floor .
Though our state plays fast and loose with road safety standards (among other things), we’re a stickler for vehicle inspections. Matter of fact, we are only one of about a dozen states that require them annually.
Just last week, we cited the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System data in 2018. It listed our state’s rate of deaths in vehicle crashes per 100,000 residents at No. 10 among all states.
The other nine states that top our number of fatalities per 100,000, with exceptions such as when the vehicle is first sold or transferring ownership by a few, do not require inspections at all. States that have stopped requiring them in recent years have seen their fatality rates in accidents climb significantly.
Do regular vehicle inspections really spare us tragedies? In West Virginia’s case it would appear they don’t.
However, it stands to reason without doing what we already are doing things will only get far worse with more serious accidents and fatalities.
Some may still jump at the chance to ditch vehicle inspections to every two years, but we won’t.
Discovering an unsafe condition before a disaster on the road can save you more than just time and money.
Some are going to argue vehicle owners should get their hands dirty and regularly inspect their own tires, brakes, lights, shocks and springs.
Yes, some do. But most drivers don’t have a clue about such vehicle issues except when something goes wrong.
Others would be more inclined to drive unsafe vehicles, anyhow, endangering countless people if we change this law.
There may still be room to negotiate this proposal, allowing newer vehicles to only be required inspections every two years, for instance.
But bottom line, we would rather pay for new brakes or tires than someone’s funeral.