Free Republic

If you live in one of the more than 20 states where Opus Inspection, through its subsidiary Envirotest, operates emissions testing programs, you may have seen its “RapidScreen” trucks and, more lately, unmanned stations set up beside the road, scanning the tailpipe emissions of passing vehicles. You may even live in a state where receiving a clean bill of health from one of these trucks a couple of times a year can exempt you from having to present yourself and your car for an emissions test at registration time (though you still have to pay the inspection fee, naturally). The...

Gov. Charlie Crist is preparing to sign a plan enacting tough, California-style car-emissions rules. BY MARY ELLEN KLAS meklas@MiamiHerald.com Florida will adopt California's car-pollution standards -- the toughest in the nation -- and become the first state in the Southeast to enact targets for reducing greenhouse gases, under executive orders Gov. Charlie Crist plans to sign Friday in Miami. PABLO MARTINEZ/AP PHOTO Florida will adopt California's car-pollution standards -- the toughest in the nation -- and become the first state in the Southeast to enact targets for reducing greenhouse gases, under executive orders Gov. Charlie Crist plans to sign Friday...

p. 4A Eight years after the Denver area started centralized pollution testing for cars, there's scant evidence that the $44 million-a-year program has done much to clear the region's air. And now, as the program moves into a new era of drive-by tailpipe screening, even its backers say whatever impact it might have is shriveling by the year as new, cleaner-burning cars generate less and less pollution. In 1995, drivers began taking their cars to one of 15 testing stations throughout the metro area. Since then, the Colorado health department has often led the cheers for the program, saying it...

Houston will be lowering speed limits in an eight-county area to 55 mph in May 2002. Dallas area drivers have already had to endure this. Texas is the only state in the country implementing this nonsense. The EPA has forced it on us. It is the contention of the NMA that these speed limits are illegal. The state is superceding the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) mandates because of EPA blackmail. The EPA contends that car emissions will be "substantially reduced" if people would drive slower. They manufacture these benefits using a computer model that the Government Accounting Office said had...

I went to get my car's emission test done today; I failed. I have an older european import, but it is in awesome condition. If mine failed, I can only imagine how many others have failed. Anyone wish to share?