BY KIRK STARRATT

Kings County Register

Don’t believe the rumours: stricter motor vehicle inspections still involve rejection stickers.

Peter Reid of Peter's Auto Clinic in New Minas says vehicles that need minor repairs but don’t pose an immediate safety hazard will still receive a rejected sticker. The owner then has 10 days to make the required repairs and be re-inspected.

Reid said perhaps one of the biggest changes since the first of February is inspectors can now put an out-of-service designation on vehicles that aren't roadworthy. The inspector can pull the inspection sticker and state on the inspection slip the vehicle is a public hazard. Those vehicles aren’t allowed back on the road with the vehicle until the problem is repaired.

“With the old inspections, if the brakes, suspension or steering was bad and the vehicle was unsafe to be on the road, all we could do is put a rejected sticker on. They could still take it on the road,” Reid says.

Now, he says, if an inspector deems a vehicle not roadworthy and the driver decides to keep driving it, the inspector's liability ends and the driver can be fined.

Inspectors must now also take the wheels off a vehicle to check the state of the brakes.

“The changes are a good thing,” he says. “There were a lot of vehicles with bad brakes.”

The price of an inspection has increased as well, from $15.50 to $25 for passenger cars, station wagons, trucks or motorized homes. The increase is intended to cover the cost of removing the wheels for brake inspections and rising costs for station operators.

Reid says, when you consider most independent shops charge $45 to $60 per hour for labour and an inspection can take up to an hour to complete, an inspector is only being half-paid for their time. However, he says, inspections could also generate a lot of work for a shop - and things have been crazy for him as of late.

He points out the customer is getting a much better deal now, considering the improvements to the inspection process for just the $10 increase.

Roadside safety inspections have found vehicles that did not meet standards despite having a valid inspection sticker. The new regulations will catch faked inspections and increase penalties. They enhance qualifications for testers and increase accountability of station operators.