New Hampshire lawmakers recently voted to eliminate mandatory vehicle inspections starting in January 2026. The provision served as a major bargaining chip in the state’s latest budget, which was signed into law by Gov. Kelly Ayotte in late June.
Since 1930, Mainers have been forced to have annual safety inspections performed on their cars as a means to “keep the roads safe.” But an increasing body of evidence concludes that regular safety inspections are outdated, ineffective and burdensome.
Instead of eliminating yearly car inspections, Maine lawmakers have tried to move us in the wrong direction year after year, most recently through the consideration of LD 566. The bill authorizes the chief of the Maine State Police to digitize the safety inspection system, as well as increase the annual inspection fee paid by motorists.
The proposal, which claims to “modernize” Maine’s vehicle inspection program, would fail to resolve the deeper issues with mandated safety inspections.
Safety Myth: Inspections Prevent Accidents and Make Roads Safer
The big myth behind mandated inspections is their capacity to reduce motor vehicle accidents. But according to the following studies and research, this simply isn’t true.
A Government Accountability Office (GOA) conducted a study that reviewed vehicle safety inspection programs published since 1990 and found no difference in crash rates or safety outcomes between states with and without mandated inspection programs.
In Maine, the rates of vehicle failure related collisions are so rare that the state Department of Transportation stopped including them in their crash statistics report published in 2019. Roughly 3% of car crashes from 2015 to 2019 involved a vehicular issue. Not only does the data show that car inspections don’t prevent accidents, they also demonstrate how rare it is for an accident to be tied to a vehicular component failure.
Inspections Breed Distrust among Consumers
The idea of a digitized inspection system sounds like it could be efficient and reliable, but it would actually give Mainers more of a reason to be skeptical of auto services.
According to a 2016 AAA survey, two out of three Americans do not trust auto repair shops. Car owners have noted excessive charges, unnecessary service recommendations and poor past experiences as some of the top reasons that car repair services are untrustworthy.
This distrust is validated through another study done by researchers in Pennsylvania who deliberately created 13 defects in a brand new car prior to its inspection. Out of all the garages they visited, the detection rate of real defects varied from 25% to 54 percent. Mechanics on average only found five of the 13 defects while also “finding” an average of two non-existent defects.
There is no data to support the idea that mechanics in Maine specifically are manipulating defects, though Mainers have plenty of anecdotes to share about “bad actors” in the auto industry.
Digitizing the system isn’t going to make auto shops any more honest or consistent. It could, however, incentivize auto shops to find as many defects as they can.
An electronic inspection system would show mechanics if vehicles in their shop passed or failed at different stations. If a motorist brings their car to a different shop for a second opinion, mechanics may be unwilling to disagree with the previous shop’s assessment in fear of having their inspection license suspended by the State Police.
Inspections are a Financial Burden for Mainers
The standard cost for a vehicle inspection is $12.50, except in Cumberland County where it costs $18.50. But to continue to legally drive on the roads, Mainers must pay millions more in mandated repairs regardless of whether those repairs are actually necessary.
LD 566 raises the safety inspection fee to $20 when the current pricing is burdensome enough, especially for those in rural areas who are most dependent on reliable transportation. There’s no reason to raise the fee since inspections don’t guarantee safe vehicles or prevent car crashes.
Given that safety inspections don’t prevent accidents and are inconsistent, LD 566 raises the cost for Mainers without guaranteeing car safety–it simply makes the system more burdensome than it already is today. In addition, LD 566 would require those motorists to provide personal information to mechanics while creating a digital record of their attempted inspections in a database maintained by the State Police.
Maine Should Follow in New Hampshire’s Footsteps
There are only 14 states that mandate yearly safety inspections, and this number shrinks almost every year, with New Hampshire becoming the latest state to kick mandatory inspections to the curb.
If LD 566 moves forward, more money will be funneled into an already flawed system. Rather than investing in costly and intrusive high-tech oversight, Maine lawmakers should follow states like New Hampshire and eliminate vehicle inspections altogether.