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We had tailpipe testing here until a few years ago. This area is bowl shaped, crap comes in, settles, and our air quality sinks. Some brainiac in local government devised a tailpipe sniffer plan to get the federal government air quality board off our back as we would be trying to correct the problem(s). Never once did they (local govt) make industry clean up their pollution, just the average vehicle owner as city/county vehicles including police, fire, ems, school busses, city busses, were all exempt along with semi trucks and other diesel vehicles.
So around 1983 the plan is implemented and annual testing made mandatory with criminal punishment for failure to comply. In the early years if your vehicle did not pass you could have it checked out and once a predetermined amount of money was spent trying to fix it, the vehicle would be exempted for that year. After several years the exemption process was eliminated and the vehicle had to comply, no exemptions. I never had to fight that battle so I don't know of all the details. Vehicles built prior to 1984 only got sniffer tested. Models years '84 & newer got a visual check to make sure the catalytic converter and under hood emission controls were still in place. Once OBD2 came out the visual stopped and the computer was checked for codes.
After 18/19 years a rolling 25 year cutoff was put into place. Some one was smart enough to realize that if anyone had a vehicle that age still on the road it was likely maintained well enough to pass the sniffer anyway. Then a real bit of news was released to the public; the emissions testing program was not run by any government agency but a local businessman/politician. For twenty years or more, every vehicle registered in the county and as many commuters from surrounding counties that they could nab had been paying $8.25 per vehicle per year for this testing. Meanwhile studies had been done and the results were that 99.7% of all vehicles tested passed the first time and that the air quality had not dramatically increase during the time the testing had been in practice. Within two years the whole system was done away with.
So around 1983 the plan is implemented and annual testing made mandatory with criminal punishment for failure to comply. In the early years if your vehicle did not pass you could have it checked out and once a predetermined amount of money was spent trying to fix it, the vehicle would be exempted for that year. After several years the exemption process was eliminated and the vehicle had to comply, no exemptions. I never had to fight that battle so I don't know of all the details. Vehicles built prior to 1984 only got sniffer tested. Models years '84 & newer got a visual check to make sure the catalytic converter and under hood emission controls were still in place. Once OBD2 came out the visual stopped and the computer was checked for codes.
After 18/19 years a rolling 25 year cutoff was put into place. Some one was smart enough to realize that if anyone had a vehicle that age still on the road it was likely maintained well enough to pass the sniffer anyway. Then a real bit of news was released to the public; the emissions testing program was not run by any government agency but a local businessman/politician. For twenty years or more, every vehicle registered in the county and as many commuters from surrounding counties that they could nab had been paying $8.25 per vehicle per year for this testing. Meanwhile studies had been done and the results were that 99.7% of all vehicles tested passed the first time and that the air quality had not dramatically increase during the time the testing had been in practice. Within two years the whole system was done away with.
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