Counter guys, take a seat for this one. Mechanics…ones who work in shops, inspection stations, for fleet services: this post is for you. I’m sure that you don’t need a reminder of the kinds of impact your work has on the rolling stock you see every day. Broken stuff comes in, fixed stuff goes out, done to the best of your ability, right? What about you vehicle inspectors? Did you go over the car with a fine-toothed comb? Did you follow each and every step your state’s DOT lined out for you to follow? Are you sure? Because right now there is a case going on in Vermont that just might put another burden of liability onto your shoulders.
Last May, 86-year-old Donald and 83-year-old Elizabeth Ibey were driving in their 1992 Chevrolet Corsica down a hill when the brake system completely failed. In the almost inevitable accident, Elizabeth died when the Corsica struck a tree stump. The accident was investigated, and the car was found to have serious corrosion present nearly everywhere underneath the car. The traced back immediately to the vehicle’s annual inspection. Vermont has a very thorough vehicle inspection system (you can read the list HERE) and during that inspection, the corroded brake lines (as well as weakened points in the unibody) should have been easy to spot. So what happened? Well, currently the licensed mechanic that performed the inspection, Steven Jalbert, is facing manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges and is facing up to fifteen years in prison if he is convicted. Police and the Vermont DMV claim that Jalbert did not put the car on a lift, remove a tire, or even perform the state-mandated brake test, a 20 MPH stop within 25 feet.
I get that inspections can be a pain in the ass, from both the mechanic and vehicle owner’s perspective. I’ve personally been subjected to Texas’ annual inspection that requires some random individual to drive your car around while you wait. Vermont’s tests are essentially two-fold: the primary reason is to make sure that the vehicle is safe to drive on the roads, and the secondary form is to look for “unauthorized modifications”, like tint, bumper height issues, missing catalytic converters, etc. You can argue about the modifications all you want, but I support the idea of a vehicle being inspected for basic serviceability, especially when I’ve seen cars driving with no functioning lights in the rear, or skewed alignments due to shot front end components, or the absolute winner, bent frames. Yes, I’ve seen it. And in a place that I would expect to be conducive to vehicle rust, like Vermont, there should be an inspection to check for corrosion damage. It was lined out in the testing procedure, which I have no doubt was present somewhere at Jalbert’s place of employment. And he failed to follow the law, slapped an inspection sticker on a Chevy that I’d inspect fully even if it was in Arizona it’s whole life, and went about his day like nothing happened.
But here’s where things get dicey: Jalbert performed the inspection two months prior to the accident. Nobody can predict the future, and predicting when a brake line will go might be difficult, but I would expect that any outside corrosion on a car with rust everywhere underneath would have been visible enough that a competent mechanic could have at least pointed it out as a possible issue to the owners. At what point do you, as the mechanic, step in and claim that the brake line is too corroded to be safe…when it is leaking? Before? How are you able to predict brake line failure unless the car looks like it spent half of it’s life submerged in the North Atlantic? Placing that kind of legal burden on mechanics would cause many to back out for fear of lawsuits.
Here’s my thoughts, for what they are worth: If is proven that Jalbert skipped any step-especially any step that regarded the brake system during his inspection, then he has risked his license and could stand to lose the case simply for not following the inspection standard. If he had actually inspected the Corsica within Vermont guidelines, and if the car was as rusted as the accident investigator claimed, then both the extensive rust issue and bad brake lines should have been very easy to spot. While the operator of the car has the responsibility to maintain the safety of the vehicle, the Ibeys were being responsible for their safety by taking their Corsica in for an inspection by a licensed mechanic, and the result of a half-assed inspection left Elizabeth dead. If you translate that to the medical world, that would be a malpractice suit in half a second. Watch this one, boys and girls…this could get bad.
Used to browse through JRITS on Reddit a while back. Seeing the way people neglect their cars (and half-ass fixes) makes me think a mandatory yearly inspection is a good idea. Separate the inspection station from the mechanic shop though – there should be no incentive to tell people they need to fix what isn’t broken.
We share the road with people like this. It’s little difference from the Hyundai behind you in traffic that has its brake rotors worn down to pizza slicers. As home mechanics we’d like to blame the driver, but do you periodically open up your washing machine to check for wear of the internal parts?
I think we should make inspections mandatory. Not crazy in depth, like saying parts must be original or CARB certified, or disqualifying a car for a rust hole in cosmetic sheet metal, but a mechanical roadworthiness check. As for frequency, annually is probably the best we can reasonably ask.
As for Mr. Jalbert, I think the manslaughter charge is deserved if he signed off on a roadworthiness inspection that never occurred.
Interesting article. First question that comes to my mind is: is the accident investigator in the employ of the victims family or are they local or state authorities? Having grown up in an inspection station in NH, you soon learn that people think mandatory inspections are nothing more than a money grab. People who move here from Massachusetts are generally flabbergasted that an inspection could take almost an hour and involve wheel removal.
The point is, it’s nearly impossible to get people to fix things that are wrong never mind things that might be wrong later.
Take a seat! As if I’m allowed a stool at the counter! lol ….
As far as the story, that’s rather terrifying but I can’t say I blame the charge or any of it. We don’t have yearly inspections here in Ontario but I wish we did. I’ve always thought that a yearly one could be SIMPLER mind you, just obvious things like brakes, brake lines, fuel lines, and other SERIOUSLY important safety concerns… But not a full-on inspection.
What REALLY scares me is places like Michigan that have NO inspection. The kind of garbage driving around on roads there astounds me, sometimes.
The thing I wonder if what if this car had received heavy undercoating at some point before the inspection and after the car had been on the road a few years. My thought being that a layer of goo could have obscured the damage, or trapped moisture and salt against the materials, accelerating corrosion while hiding it.
No safety inspections here in Georgia (unless the problem is flagrant enough a cop can spot it going down the road), but we don’t have too many cars turn from metallic to ceramics either.
While I agree that you can’t expect a mechanic to give an exact time to failure, if this guy failed to even put the car on a lift, that’s pretty serious negligence there.
Annual inspections? How much does that cost? Most of my life I’m betting the cost and time wasted on an inspection would have ruined my budget for fixing what may be wrong. Glad I live where its still kind of freeish. Idaho
So an area with mandatory inspections has an incident where the mandatory process failed.
And the answer is more areas need mandatory inspections?
Really?
Sounds like the state collected their fee from licensing this mechanic to do inspections, and that was it. So the state gets money for a process that accomplished nothing, at least in this particular case.
If the licensing and the process didn’t accomplish the goal, maybe the state should get out of the business of collecting money in the name of the public good. This illustrated the incompetence of the state process perfectly.
But nobody seems to see that angle of it.
You can take ONE example of a situation and sum of the integrity or the system . Regardless of the exists of inspections in the state this accident would have occurred, so you can’t blame the accident for causing the accident. But lets say on mechanic doing his job properly had investigated the car like he was supposed to he would have saved these peoples lives.
Commonsense inspections are great in theory, but are also the camel’s nose in the tent for busybody bureaucrats. Look at Britain’s MOT, and I’ve heard the Germans are even more thorough. I think I’ll do without and take my chances.
BTW, how did the brakes fail completely? Isn’t a dual circuit system supposed to prevent that? I’ve had brake line rust through and I could still stop with degraded performance.
Out on a booze cruise?
Doing burnouts?
Spinning cookies in the grass?
We ARE talking about an 86 year old driver here…
I was wondering that, too.
Here’s a theory I’m kicking around: It was the vacuum line to the booster that failed, which means both loss of engine power and braking power, creating the loss of control.
Well, I have had brakes “fail completely” before. Coming to the bottom of an exit ramp, it was steeper than expected and I had to press the pedal a little harder than planned. I felt something let go, but stopped at the bottom. It wasn’t until the next time I went to stop (at a red light) that I realized “oh shit”! I blew through it, ran it off the parking pawl, bounced over a curb heading back out on to the road, and continued on. Kept it in 1st and used an Advance Auto parking block to stop. Turned out a brake line blew on both circuits, didn’t even hit the brakes that hard, but you couldn’t see my brake lines at one of the points of failure.
Also, had a brake line pop on my wife’s car, twice. Different line, but knew it was only a matter of time until the second one went. Ended up being 4 years apart. Point is, when do you call it unsafe? If surface rust is your indicator, you’ll be replacing brake lines every 3-5 years here, even though they may be good for another 10.
The damn brakes were worked on 2 days prior to inspection by Cody Chevrolet. If brakes failing was the issue then why isn’t the mechanic who did the brake work two days prior to Mr Jalbert seeing the vehicle being held liable? Whole case is bogus. Don’t believe everything you read in the press.
Mandatory inspections? Are you high? There\’s zero chance some greenhorn mechanic fresh out of college is going to go joy ride my 11 second muscle car. Nor do I want Uncle Sam chastising me for having line locks.
I\’m sure there\’s more to the story than a rusty brake line leaking and causing death. Much like when people were suing Toyota for runaway Prius\’s when they simply couldve stabbed the brakes or turned off the key.
The Toyota problem was that they didn’t have a key to turn off, but otherwise, you’re probably right.
I don’t think I would want to live in a state where there was not annual safety inspections. Waaay too many people out there who pay absolutely no attention to the maintenance of their vehicles.
We have em here in NY. Its not a big deal if you keep your car in good shape of course some do not. What pisses me off is every year I have to get it done on my 2 cars that maybe see 1000 miles a year every year!. Where does the states responsibility lie in all this. We have cars being built with super advanced materials but brake lines still rot out. What is in that stuff they spray on the roads before a storm? Cant be good for the water supply yet it inevitably goes there. I know the car was s 92 and probably a piece of shit and its a shame that poor women died but why does this dtuff have to be so potent?
No inspections in Florida. No inspections in New Mexico – only a once every two year emissions test IF you live in a county that demands that. I am surprised that either state doesn’t want the additional revenue inspections generate.
Accidents happen. It is the driver’s responsibility to know whether the car is safe to drive, not the mechanic’s and most assuredly not the Government’s. Today’s soxiety is all too quick to forgo personal responsibility.
Nice to know that someone thinks this way. Most seem to feel that one should only know how drive a functional automobile, since nothing should ever go wrong and it’s not my fault when it does.
Another angle, where is the state’s liability to get incompetent drivers off the road? Had they been younger, would quicker reaction time saved a life?
If the State is collecting the fee for inspection, let the State be responsible for any mistakes incurred at it’s testing stations. The tech didn’t cover his own ass by actually doing his job. Fire him. The State’s testing process is flawed.
California has no inspections either.
If they did, a quarter of the cars would be taken off the road.
Personally, I keep my cars, new and classics in top shape but I still would not support the state trying to grab more money from our pockets than they already do.
Shouldn’t the shop the inspection was performed at be the one liable? I mean it’s their name on the inspection report also… They should have insurance to cover this kind of problem. Sad deal the lady lost her life but at what point does the shop share the responsibility along with the tech…
We hold bartenders responsible if they serve too much to someone who later drives and kills another – so why not? I’d rather they line this mechanic up and shot him – and that’s not hyperbole. What is absolutely win in my mind is that this guy will be in jail longer than the remainder of her natural life.
If you want to find sympathy for the mechanic – you can look in the dictionary, it’s right between s**t and syphilis.
I find the 2 month lag time curious. What I\’m wondering is how many miles were driven in those 2 months. Given the age of the drivers, I\’m thinking that even though there was a decent interval between the inspection and the wreck, if they only drove a very limited amount of miles in that time. That might be a big reason why he is facing charges despite it being 2 months after the fact.
What I find disturbing about this is that all older vehicles in a normal climate have rust, and lots of it. How can the state place the burden on the inspector to determine when rust takes the vehicle out of service? My guess is that there is about to be a large backlash as shops begin erring on the side of caution and rejection many, many vehicles. Legally, he had a duty to carry out what the state entrusted of him, and sadly that may cost his freedom. But what about the personal responsibility of the owners of a very old car in a Northern climate to recognize this potential hazard? Tragic.
On the other side of the coin, I own a shop in Missouri, and we have one of them most stringent vehicle safety inspections. Our most upset customers are those who get their safety inspections failed (they often tell people we are crooks, etc)…and while it is painful for me, I have zero regret about upholding the law. The problem is some shops that don’t care. Why they don’t do their job I cannot understand…an inspection in Missouri is $12 and I pay more than than in labor and state stickers…so it’s literally a money loser. The ONLY reason we do them is to be a complete shop and as a courtesy. I could easily chose not to be an inspection station. A customer will come in with multiple failures that did not occur over night and get angry explaining how “xyz shop” passes them every year. Now maybe this little incident will cause others to think. When we must fail a vehicle with cords showing in the tires, ball joints and wheel bearings about to fall out and leaking brake components, then we can have some faith in the process. I printed this article for every staff member and have a stack of them for our failed inspection customers.