Feel good causes seem to morph into mindless crusades at just the moment hen the original reasons the cause have been lost sight The battle over emissions tests automobiles proves the point. States around the country are tough new testing requirements - at just the point when automobile emissions are no longer much of a factor in the air quality equation.
Since the advent of catalytic converters (1975), engine computers (1981) and electronic fuel injection (1986), emissions of harmful Volatile Organic Compounds and Carbon Monoxide have been cut by 95 percent or more.
The majority of what comes out any late model car or truck's exhaust is harmless water vapor and carbon dioxide - though this is almost universally ignored media reports on the topic of mobile emissions.
A 1995 study by the American Automobile Association found that of 1996, just 24 percent of the Volatile Organic Compounds that the precursors of smog came from passenger cars and trucks. Yet thanks to the dead hand of the federal Clean Air Act and its 1990 amendments, states are being forced to adopt multimillion-dollar "chassis dynamometer" emissions tests that are inconvenient, often damage the vehicles being tested -and do nothing to clean up their air.
What's going on in Virginia is a case in point.
Gov. George Allen and his Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) head Becky Norton Dunlop tried their best to keep dyno testing out of Virginia. The state actually sued EPA and ultimately achieved a small victory: Instead of centralized emissions tests done at government-run facilities, as EPA prefers, Virginia would retain its system of letting private garages perform the tests.
Unfortunately, the hated dyno test - centerpiece of EPA:s plan to radically curtail the masses' free dom of transportation - remains.
Beginning Dec. 1, it will be mandatory for all passenger cars and light trucks built since the 1968 model year registered in the People's Republic of Virginia.
The dyno test is controversial because it requires the owner to permit a technician to "drive" his car on a treadmill-like device at various speeds, in order to sample emissions output under "real world" conditions.
It's an open question, though, whether this elaborate scheme is any more effective at catching polluters than the older method of simply inserting a probe in the car's tailpipe as the engine idles.
Worse, the technicians who perform the dyno tests are typically low-skilled non-mechanics who are indifferent to any damage they or the tests may cause. If your vehicle overheats (no airflow over a stationary car with its engine running at "real world" speeds is very stressful) or the transmission gets ruined in the process, that's between you and your friends in government.
Locally, the tests have damaged more than 100 vehicles so far in neighboring Maryland, where dyno testing has been mandatory for several months.
There have even been instances of vehicles - usually 4x4 trucks jumping off the treadmill and run ning through walls. In these cases, the technician forgot to disengage the 4-wheel drive system before turning on the dyno.
Because of the cost of the machinery needed to perform the new dyno tests, the number of private garages able to provide them is expected to fall by a third or more. Of the 340 stations in the Northern Virginia area presently certified to perform the tailpipe sniffer test, just 150 have the necessary equipment to do the dyno tests. That means the already long lines faced by Virginia motorists for these stupid, unnecessary emissions tests will grow even longer.
And the cost of the test will roughly double - from the present $11.00 to $20.
All this hassle, extra expense and potential damage to people's cars might be justified if cars hadn't improved so much since the carefree 1960s. I'll say it again: By any objective measure, any vehicle built within the past 10 years, assuming it's in good mechanical condition, does not pollute!
Testing late models cars is equivalent to sterilizing isopropyl alcohol. It is a dog and pony show engineered by the ignorant for the benefit of the addled.
Yet state regulatory authorities won't let go - especially if there's an annual $20 fee per car and millions in state contracts at stake. Virginia now joins Maryland, New Jersey, Colorado and other vassals of Washington, helping themselves to untold boodle in the name of a boondoggle.
As for Washington and its "clean air" flapdoddle - EPA will never admit the air quality problem (at least so far as automobiles are concerned) has been solved. That would mean packing up the tent, turning off the PR juggernaut and finding some other way to waste taxpayer dollars.
New problems must be found— and old ones never solved. It may not do much for the purity of the air we breathe - but it does pay EPA Administrator Carol Browner's six figure salary.
Eric Peters writes on automotive issues for The Washington Times.
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