Old vehicles don't need to get smog checks
QI was walking past an idling early 1960s car that was producing a toxic cloud of smog. His license plate was up to date, and I was wondering how this car could pass a smog check. Do “antique” cars get a pass at the Department of Motor Vehicles? I love going to antique car shows and always wonder how the old engines must get a pass on the smog check requirement.
AThere are a handful of smog-test exemptions, Eric, and they include vehicles with a model year of 1975 or older. For diesels, they don't need to get checked out for smog if a 1997 or older model.
Also exempt are electric vehicles, of course, and those less than 8 years old if with the original owner, and motorcycles. So are any diesel-powered trucks with a gross weight of more than 14,000 pounds.
In extremely remote areas of the state, where the air quality is quite good, smog checks are not required most of the time when required elsewhere.
Back in the early 2000s, the time frame of the general exemption rolled each year, with vehicles older than three decades not having to get smog checked. But then lawmakers, worried that too many older vehicles were belching out too much, voted to change the law with thenGov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signing off on it.
So now the exemptions simply stop with the 1975 models.
Even governmentowned trucks and cars require a smog check.
QHey, Honk: They've been reworking the 5 Freeway bridge at Avery Parkway, and the street itself, since the late 19th century, or so it seems. Any update on when this work will finally be completed?
AHonk loves it when readers and sources have a little clean fun.
“Construction on the Avery Parkway interchange actually began in March 2020, and there's nothing remotely 19th century about the improvements,” Eric Carpenter, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which is overseeing the massive project there on the 5 Freeway, said in an email.
Work is being done in three stages on the bridge, so it won't be demolished all at once. That approach, he said, keeps Avery open and requires only some nighttime closures of freeway lanes — which does extend the project.
That new interchange will go from two to four lanes on Avery in each direction over the bridge and cost $30 million. It is in stage two and remains on schedule for a 2024 completion.
The overall project, which stretches 6.5 miles from the 73 toll road north to El Toro Road, comes with a $580 million price tag and, among other things, is adding a lane in each direction to the 5 Freeway. It is expected to be finished in 2024 as well.
Covering the tab is the county's half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements that was approved by voters in 2006 and projected to raise $13.2 billion over 30 years.
Honkin' fact: Last year, during 78 hours of special enforcement including and surrounding the Fourth of July, the California Highway Patrol alone arrested 997 motorists on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.