tailpipe emissions
Nashville, TN – like many cities – has an annual automobile emission test requirement. To most citizens – me included – it’s an annual forfeit of a Hamilton and anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes of our life waiting in line at the emission testing center. One additional hoop through which to jump before we get the privilege of paying the annual wheel tax and registration fee. The purpose of such requirements most of us believe to be the laudable goal of reducing excess pollution and smog in the city by identifying high-polluting cars and forcing them to bring them in line.
Then it dawns on me as I wait in line with 15 other cars. Here we sit – every car in the county every year- and idle for 10 to 30 minutes in line. And then I wonder:
- How much pollution is created by every tested car idling for an average of 20 minutes?
- What percentage of cars fail the emission test?
- Of those cars that fail, by how much? 50% over the limit? 1000% over?
I’m not advocating a total laissez faire approach, but I wonder if the pollution produced by everyone idling in line is more than the would-be pollution of offending vehicles.
Having said that I still think that testing can be advantageous, but it needs to be surgically implemented rather than towing a dragnet over everyone. I would like to see failure rates (and extent of failure) of all the makes, models and years of all tested automobiles. I’d be willing to put a big wager that a 1986 Jeep CJ7 has a higher failure rate than a 2006 Honda Civic. So why not test accordingly? If you have a high-risk car, then you test every year. Cars with lower risk of failure test less often – say every 2, 3, 4 or even 5 years. That’s right. I’m advocating racial profiling for automobiles. So long as we profile for the content of their tailpipe rather than the color of their paint. 
Several things stand in the way of this micro-eutopia:
- Concerns over fairness
- The soon-to-be-if-not-already-existing emission testing lobby
- Good ol’ government inertia
1) When dealing with government-related issues the issue of “fairness” frequently comes up. You can just hear someone shouting “It’s not fair to make some people test every year and not others.” Is it fair if you have an old jalopy that frequently fails, thus requiring you to plop down cash to get it fixed before passing? No, but that’s the price you pay for owning a jalopy. You’ve either owned it forever or you paid very little for it. Older cars, while cheap to buy, require more maintenance. Emission testing is just one more item on that list.
The best way to counter fairness argument is with hard facts. Regression analysis of the existing emission testing data would provide a fact-based metric for deciding failure rates, thus determining the testing frequency for each make/model/year. These numbers would be revised from year to year. It would stand to reason that each year a car ages its likelihood of failure increases so that at some point a car that was a 3-year tester would eventually have to test every 2 years.
2) Emission testing lobby – I don’t think such an animal exists, but in this day and age I wouldn’t be surprised if one did. Where there is enough money to be made or lost, there is a lobby
3) As for government inertia – well that’s an entire library; not just another blog post. My $0.02 on that is to throw out the party system completely and vote on issues. And unless you have a very compelling reason to re-elect someone, always vote in fresh meat. They too will inevitably be corrupted, but at least it will take a while.
