Smog check process
The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) sends a registration renewal notice which indicates if a smog check is required. If the DMV requires a smog check for a vehicle, the owner must comply with the notice within 90 days and provide a completed smog check certificate. Until a smog certificate can be provided registration will not be renewed. If the vehicle fails the smog check, the owner will be required to complete all necessary repairs and pass a smog check retest in order to complete the registration. If the costs of repairing the vehicle outweigh its value, the state may buy it and have it scrapped. The buyback program is part of California’s Consumer Assistance Program (CAP) that also offers consumer assistance for repairs related to smog check. The program is administered by the Bureau of Automotive Repair.
Policy tools
Air is susceptible to the Tragedy of the Commons, but that can be overcome with policy tools. In their book Environmental Law and Policy, Salzman and Thompson describe these policy tools as the “5 P’s” – Prescriptive Regulation, Property Rights, Penalties, Payments, and Persuasion.
Throughout the years there have been some tensions between the US EPA and the California EPA with disagreements centered on California’s Smog Check Policy (The Press-Enterprise, 1997). One disagreement has been over where smog checks are performed. The EPA believes that smog checks and smog repairs must be done separately, to avoid conflicts of interest.
For years, California has been asking the US EPA to approve a waiver allowing it to enforce its own greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles. A request was made in December 2005, but denied in March 2008 under the Bush administration, when interpretations of the Clean Air Act found California did not have the need for special emission standards. However, shortly after taking office, president Obama asked the EPA to assess if it was appropriate to deny the waiver and subsequently allowed the waiver. US EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act allows California to have its own vehicle emissions program and set greenhouse gas standards due to the state’s unique need.
Car manufacturers have been strongly opposed to the emission standards set by California, arguing that regulation imposes further costs on consumers. In 2004, California approved the world’s most stringent standards to reduce auto emissions, and the auto industry threatened to challenge the regulations in court. The new regulations required car makers to cut exhaust from cars and light trucks by 25% and from larger trucks and SUVs by 18%, standards that must be met by 2016. The auto industry argued that California’s Air Resource Board did not have the authority to adopt such regulation and that the new standards could not be met with the current technology. They further argued that it would raise vehicle costs by as much as $3,000. The agency, however, countered that argument by saying that the additional costs would only be about $1,000 by 2016.
The Obama administration has proposed setting a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, which could potentially increase fuel efficiency by an average of 5% per year from 2012 to 2016.
Evaluation
According to the California Air Resources Board, the California Smog Check program removes about 400 tons of smog-forming pollutants from California’s air every day.
On March 12, 2009, the Bureau of Automotive Repair and the Air Resource Board hired Sierra Research, Inc. to analyze the data collected in the BAR’s Roadside Inspection Program to evaluate the effectiveness of the Smog Check Program from data collected in 2003–2006. Under the Roadside Inspection Program vehicles are randomly inspected at checkpoints set up by the California Highway Patrol (CHP). One objective of the evaluation was to compare the post smog check performance of pre-1996 (1974–1995) vehicles to the post smog check performance determined from a previous evaluation collected in 2000–2002. The report made several recommendations to reduce the number of vehicles failing the Roadside test. One was to develop a method for evaluating station performance. The other was to perform inspections immediately following certifications at smog check stations. Finally, the report recommended continued use of the Roadside test to evaluate the effectiveness of the Smog Check program.
