Let’s Clear the Air
Mar 24th, 2007 by Alex
The slogan of Maryland’s Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program (VEIP) is “Let’s Clear the Air!” I’m a tad confused about that. I’m clearly not an environmentally minded person, despite having a minored in environmental sciences. According to my studies, the machine age began back in the 1400’s, beginning a downward spiral of pollution and self-destruction that continues into our time. How does VEIP clear the air?
You take your car in every two years, pay $14 for some guy to attach a reader to your OBD and tell you that it’s okay. In reality, you’ll pass so long as the OBD is functional and returns some decent values. So I arrived at 4:45, second in line behind some idiot with an aftermarket exhaust who should have known that he’d fail but decided to hassle the testing guy anyway, resulting in a full tread test for his car. Sure enough, it failed (as most aftermarket cat-back exhausts do). At 5:05 my car was in the bay. At 5:07 I had my receipt and was on my way. VEIP keeps dirty cars off the road, that’s all. It doesn’t clear anything.
False advertising, I think. The slogan should be changed to “VEIP: Let’s Not Make it Worse!” Oh yeah, and don’t pick the shorter line if there’s an idiot with an aftermarket exhaust in front of you.
Hence why in Ohio we say screw it and don’t even have emissions inspection or any inspection of the vehicle for that matter. In NY I get away with not having to do it because apparently since my truck is a 1994, it is exempt.
In Maryland you only need to get the entire car inspected during the process of selling/buying it. The VEIP is every two years, although there are exceptions for historic/old vehicles, etc.