In a cost-cutting move, New Jersey ended its annual auto safety inspections in 2010. State officials cited a lack of evidence that inspections improved public safety.
“If we’re going to invest millions of taxpayer dollars year after year in a program, then it is essential that we be able to justify the expense and effectiveness of said program,” then-Motor Vehicle Commission Chief Administrator Raymond Martinez said. “With a lack of conclusive data, and the current fiscal crisis, we cannot justify this expense.”
Eight years later, the journal Contemporary Economic Policy published a study on the effects of ending New Jersey’s inspections. It concluded that “discontinuing the law resulted in no significant increase in either fatalities due to car failure or the percentage of accidents due to car failure.”
The lead author, a professor of health economics, noted that technological advancements in the seven decades since the passage of New Jersey’s inspection law had produced enormous gains in auto reliability. With cars dramatically safer than in past decades, states have been rethinking their safety inspection requirements.
New Hampshire is one of a dwindling number of states that requires an annual safety inspection, which makes New Hampshire’s law one of the most burdensome in the country.
Lawmakers have tried for years to abolish the mandate, citing the cost burden on drivers and the shortage of evidence that inspections improve public safety. But in years past, auto dealers and independent mechanics have persuaded legislators to continue mandating what is a lucrative income stream for them.
That could change this year. The House on Thursday approved by a wide margin (212-143) House Bill 649, which would lift the safety and emissions inspection mandates from state law.
The rising quality of automobiles is reflected in vehicle fatality data. Motor vehicle fatalities per 100,000 people peaked in 1937, according to data compiled by the National Safety Council. By raw numbers, U.S. motor vehicle fatalities peaked in 1972.
Research on the effectiveness of auto safety inspections is mixed but predominantly finds that inspections do not produce significant improvements in safety.
- A study just last year of Danish auto inspections and crashes published in the journal Traffic Safety Research “found no association between periodic inspections and crash risk in separate analyses of each vehicle type. There were no specific effects of inspections of older vehicles aged 10 years or more.” It also noted that “based on previous research, the positive effects on crash risk are questionable.”
- A 2021 Spanish study reviewed existing research on inspections and crashes, finding only one study producing “a significant association between road crashes and the absence of a valid vehicle inspection certificate,” while “the other studies showed either a small reduction in crash rates (around 9%), no association, or a higher crash rate in vehicles with more inspections.”
- A 2015 Government Accountability Office report could find no causal relationship between safety inspections and accidents. “Despite the consensus among the state inspection program officials we interviewed that these programs improve vehicle condition, research remains inconclusive about the effect of safety inspection programs on crash rates. There is little recent empirical research on the relationship between vehicle safety inspection programs and whether these programs reduce crash rates. What is available has generally been unable to establish any causal relationship.”
- North Carolina commissioned a study of its annual auto inspection program, and the 2008 report concluded that “no evidence exists showing the safety inspection program is effective” despite North Carolinians spending $141 million a year on inspections.
- A 1999 study in the Southern Economic Journal “found no evidence that inspections significantly reduce fatality or injury rates.”
- A 2023 study published in the Journal of Transportation Engineering did find 5.5% fewer highway fatalities in states that had safety inspections, but this result stands out as strikingly different from the norm.
As many researchers have noted, cars today are very different from those made in the 1930s, ‘50s, ‘70s, or even ‘90s. Fifty years ago, it was common to see broken down cars along U.S. roadsides every day. In 2025, a disabled vehicle is a fairly uncommon sight.
The massive advances in automobile reliability and safety have rendered state safety inspections difficult to justify. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lists vehicles as the critical factor in just 2 percent of motor vehicle accidents. And even then it takes care to note that “none of these reasons implied a vehicle causing the crash.”
There were 1,383,700 vehicles registered in New Hampshire in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which collects vehicle data. At between $30-$50 per vehicle, inspections alone likely cost Granite Staters approximately $41.5 million to $69.2 million a year. That doesn’t count any repair work required to pass inspection.
All of this is to comply with a law that has not been shown with confidence to produce measurable improvements in motorist safety.
Given the massive expenses imposed on motorists and the negligible gains, if any, ending mandatory inspections could be expected to generate a significant financial savings for New Hampshire motorists.
As a reminder, authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers. Submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com
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