| Re: California Smog Regs - 2013 |
Subject: Re: California Smog Regs - 2013 by CentralCoaster on 2013/1/8 4:07:31 Explain to me how "taking 800,000 old cars off the road" is a "more cost effective program for CA motorists" ??? That's nearly a million owners replacing their car because of this blatant effort to make them unregisterable. Should not the goal of a smog program be to reduce smog independent of other factors? ...and not to place benchmarks of how many cars they can force people to replace? Are any natural resources consumed in producing a new car to replace old cars prematurely? I had to remove my 85 ford LTD from the road because of the "check guages" light didn't light up with key on, and no smog tech would pass it, despite that it was made this way from the factory (light not tied to the computer, not a code indicator, etc). It sniffed fine and had all emissions items intact and in working order. But I guess that doesn't matter. If anyone thinks this will reduce smog check prices they are sorely mistaken. The smog shop has already invested in all that equipment and has to pay for it to smog those cars on the road older than 2000. If anything it's another excuse to increase the costs again for older car owners. I spent $75 last smog check to get my Corvette done. $25 of that fee was for the evap and pressure test on my $5 gas cap. And to presume that my car is a higher polluter based on other people's lack of maintenance and punish me by sending me to selective stations is pure bullshit too. If anything they should send owners there based purely on their own previous smog test pass/fail rate independent of what other people do or don't do to maintain their car, of any year. The other doozie is this so-called STAR program that is replacing Gold Shield. They are now scoring stations based on their pass/fail rate compared to the statewide average. If a station is passing cars at a higher than average rate, their score will be reduced, and their STAR eligibility may be in jeopardy. In short, these smog stations now have an incentive to fail a certain percentage of cars for their own survival. /RANT OFF |
