Inspections promote clean air, safety

The next time Memphis shows up in another national survey for negative reasons, we will surely deserve it. The city tries to move responsibility for vehicle safety and emissions inspections to Shelby County. Shelby County punts to the state of Tennessee, and the state says “not interested” (June 29 article, “Auto tests roll to a stop”). What a backwater city, county and state we must appear to be.

Responsibility should probably rest with the state, as is the case with other states, and should most assuredly include Shelby County, since residents of the county, and the North Mississippi suburbs for that matter, contribute just as much to vehicle emissions in our region as the city of Memphis. Also, a safety inspection, no matter how cursory, does set a minimum standard for vehicle safety and is better than having no safety inspection at all.

As a city resident and city and county taxpayer, I would have been fine with continuing with the current city inspection program; at least we were doing something. Now, we will have to wait until we are faced with a cutoff of federal funds for roads before we do anything.

Sometimes we make things more difficult for ourselves than they need to be. And, seemingly lost in the discussion is the notion that clean air and safe vehicles are good things and marks of an advanced standard of living.