Tunex is a great place to go for emissions and safety testing. Our prices are fair, and we would love to help you. Even though the State of Utah hasn’t required general safety testing since Jan. 1, 2018, there’s no law saying you can’t hire someone to check your car regularly.
Why did mandatory inspections for all other vehicles go away? Sen. Dan McKay, R-Riverton, was still a Utah House of Representatives member when the law was changed. He argued that failed equipment causes less than 1%of road fatalities and that 34 of 50 states had dropped their vehicle inspection programs. He said they made people feel good without making vehicles safer. Other legislators thought traffic officers could fill the gap by giving tickets to people driving unsafe vehicles.
That’s fine in theory, and it may be a good way to handle the worst vehicles, but don’t rely on traffic officers to inspect your car. They aren’t equipped or trained to do anything but the most routine checks.
Rely on Tunex instead. Our technicians can inspect your vehicle, make necessary repairs and prevent potentially deadly problems. We want you to make a habit of bringing in your vehicles for us to check them and make sure they are still safe to drive. That’s a better plan than waiting until your vehicle falls apart.
For complete and up-to-date information about safety inspections and emissions, visit dmv.utah.gov/register/inspections. For more about safety inspections and emissions testing, read on.
Emissions
What about emissions? Different counties have different rules, but emissions testing is generally done every two years and is tied to the model year. Even-numbered model years are tested in even-numbered years, and odd-numbered model years are tested in odd-numbered years. Anything older than that, but more recent than 1967, must be tested annually. Emissions testing isn’t required for any vehicle that was built in 1967 or earlier.
Safety Inspections
The state currently requires safety inspections under the following circumstances:
- Rebuilt salvage vehicles whose owners want a rebuilt title.
- First-time registration for street legal all-terrain vehicles. Even if ATVs have been registered, they have to be registered again when the title is transferred.
- Commercial vehicles.
- Motorhomes with three axles.
According to Mark Oliver at KSLNewsRadio, the number of safety violation tickets written by Utah Highway Patrol officers increased 43%one year after vehicle inspections were no longer required. There were 3,811 safety inspection tickets in 2017 and 5,454 safety inspection tickets in 2018. UHP tweets at the time were increasingly blaming crashes on problems such as bald tires. Oct.29, 2021, Fox13 Salt Lake City had an online story about safety inspections. The article said the UHP hadn’t seen a significant increase in crashes caused by faulty equipment despite a drastic drop in safety inspections:
Even though Sen. Karen Mayne, the Senate Minority Leader, would like to bring back mandatory vehicle safety inspections for tires and brakes, the data to support that isn’t there, and Utah values the right to make decisions personally instead of imposing government mandates. Will mandatory general inspections ever return? We don’t know, but we will be surprised if they do.
We believe it is still a good idea to have your vehicle regularly inspected so the next time you need to get an emissions test done, ask us to do a routine safety inspection. We want to keep all of you safe on Utah roads.
