Three New Hampshire mechanics and the company they were formerly employed by are in big trouble with state authorities after admitting to cheating nearly 100 cars through the state’s emissions inspection process. The companies and offending ex-employees face fines and suspension of their ability to perform state inspections.
Emissions testing is no joke anymore. States take the process very seriously, and New Hampshire apparently has State Police officers that work in a unit designed to find and root out issues just like these.
According to a story in the Concord Monitor, the men were performing the safety inspection on cars and when they would not meet the required emissions levels, they would stick the tail pipe sniffer into the pipe of a car they knew would pass. They were discovered when a car that had passed the safety check (and shouldn’t have) was reported and investigated by the authorities. A subsequent investigation of the place these guys worked, a VIP Auto center, yielded the information about cars being improperly passed.
An interesting wrinkle in the case is that the mechanics claim they only did this because the store was rushing them to get more work done. Once of the mechanics actually presented a document at the hearing showing that the most “efficient” mechanics earned bonus pay for the amount of work they could churn out. That’s not exactly confidence inspiring.
Now that the hearing has gone down, both the store and the men are waiting for a decision on their fate. If the store loses the right to inspections they lose an important revenue stream. Cars that do not pass are often fixed at the testing location because those guys have the first crack at it. The men also face a license revokation or suspension.
