We were sniffed today, and about damned time

As we pointed our urban assault vehicle on to the I-25 today, a big van was parked on the shoulder with traffic cones around it. The driver was dismounted, fiddling with a tripod upon which a little aluminum box was mounted, pointed at tailgate level of the cars descending the ramp. Right where cars would naturally be stepping on it to merge with three lanes of traffic climbing a hill with a legal limit of 75 mph.

The van's markings identified it as an automotive emissions remote testing system. About damned time.

Your humble blogger published the following lettitor in the Centre Daily Times in September of 1994:

Imagine a device about the size of a piece of luggage. It can sense pollution in automobile exhaust by the way light passes through it. The device can be placed along a busy roadway, and will flag the one car out of one hundred that pollutes too much. The device senses real exhaust in the real world, in any weather, in real driving conditions, maybe even at night.

The other 99 cars, and their drivers, pass by without inconvenience; their engines are in tune and their drivers keep them that way. Drivers from other parts pass through, and if they pollute, the device catches them. If they don’t, they go about their business.

Imagine that this device costs about as much as a car. Almost every county in Pennsylvania could afford one.

Now for the hard part: this device exists. It was field tested in California (notorious for clean air standards) two years ago. It could be a regular production item this year if enough states ordered them.

Unfortunately, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is committed to a system of centralized, stationary auto emissions testing centers. Blair and Centre county cars must be tested. Cars from neighboring counties, where emissions aren’t tested, may pollute here. Our cars may not.

Regardless of how well you maintain your car, the emissions testing center requires you to make an appointment, maybe even take off work, to submit your car to testing. You pay for the test.

The testing center also tries very hard to simulate real-world driving conditions, and doesn’t quite cut it. All that simulation isn’t cheap either. This emissions testing center costs a lot more than a car; it costs more like what a small bridge costs. Something’s wrong with this system.

Ask yourself which you’d rather have. Then call our Governor and ask him: why not "passive remote" auto emissions testing?

It shouldn't have taken them ten years to prove me right. I'm beginning to suspect that they don't want to.