Do you know why we have a vehicle safety inspection program in NC? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Rep. Julia Howard (R-Forsyth, Davie) has introduced HB 59. If it becomes law it will eliminate the mandatory safety inspection program in the state. It is now it the House Transportation Committee.

    If you believed what WRAL-TV reporter Laura Leslie recently reported you would think that nearly every vehicle owner in the state wants to keep the safety inspections. She interviewed ten people and they all favored retaining the system.

    But both the research and an assessment of the bureaucratic program done by the Program Evaluation Division of the General Assembly show that the $162 million a year program ineffective in accomplishing what it was intended to do. Scientific studies have shown that such inspection programs do little to prevent accidents. The reason for that is that, even in states that do not have such programs, the number of accidents caused by faulty equipment makes up less than 1% of all accidents. And there is not a single legitimate study that supports a single program as saving lives--which is why those who engineered this effort said they were doing it.

    Efforts have been made before to do away with the program but they have so far come up empty. So why do we still have a program that costs millions of dollars and does little good? It's called institutional inertia and government bureaucracies are the epitome of the concept.

    The idea behind institutional inertia is based on "Parkinson's Law." One version of Dr. Parkinson's observation is: "work expands to fill the void created for it." It's like a man's shop. It will always fill up no matter how much space he has. Or like closets in a home. They'll always become filled and there is eventually never enough space no matter how much is built. The corollary in government is that once a bureaucracy is created it will, as its first and foremost objective, seek to expand itself. Such expansions have as their basic raison d'être the perpetuation of the bureaucracy. And the most effective bureaucrats know that incremental budgeting requires expansion.

    Pretty soon the original problem the program or office was created to solve no longer is either the main function or in many cases even remembered by those who operate the program. It is the exercise not the result that becomes the reason for the existence of the bureaucratic operation. It's like the old tale of the drunk looking for his keys. The local patrolman came across a drunk crawling around on the ground one night. "What are you doing?" the constable asked the man. "I'm searching for my keys" was the reply. "Well, where did you last have them?" asks the patrolman. "Oh, over there by my car when I was trying to put them in the lock" came the reply. "Then why are you crawling around on all fours way over here?" asked the patrolman. "Because the light's better over here..." came the reply. Bureaucrats can always find a very justifiable reason for doing something that is completely useless as long as it serves the purpose of continuing the program created for a forgotten reason.

    The test HB 59 presents is whether the legislators in the General Assembly will have the wisdom to abolish a program, and all of its trappings, that never did do what it was created to do.

    While all this is being debated we will be treated to yet another example of institutional inertia in the "sequestration" debate in Washington. Bureaucrats and their political minions will argue that no part of government can possibly get by with 5% less.