Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Brakes Hit Your Pocket Book
Wink: If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.
As of February 1st this province will increase the price of vehicle safety inspections (MVIs). Rules will instruct mechanics to remove the wheels on vehicles to check the brakes. Increased fees are supposed to cover the mechanics costs for doing this.
Is this another money grab, or is it really necessary? Only those involved in safety investigations would know for sure, but I am wondering just how many traffic accidents are caused by bad brakes. My guess is more collisions are caused by bad drivers, some who don't know how to use properly functioning brakes in an emergency.
Will this be an opportunity for repair shops to make even more money by selling brake jobs and brake parts? For example, are brake rotors with grooves worn in them unsafe? Does it make a difference if the grooves are only slight compared to deep grooves? Who gets to interpret the tolerances and make the judgement? Defective brakes can be obvious if a wheel cylinder is leaking, a brake line is severely rusted, or pads are worn out. There are an equal number of parts where judgement is the final factor.
I believe in traffic safety and thorough vehicle inspections. In fact my career was devoted to having safe vehicles and drivers on the road. In this instance I question whether this is actually a safety improvement.
This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
As of February 1st this province will increase the price of vehicle safety inspections (MVIs). Rules will instruct mechanics to remove the wheels on vehicles to check the brakes. Increased fees are supposed to cover the mechanics costs for doing this.
Is this another money grab, or is it really necessary? Only those involved in safety investigations would know for sure, but I am wondering just how many traffic accidents are caused by bad brakes. My guess is more collisions are caused by bad drivers, some who don't know how to use properly functioning brakes in an emergency.
Will this be an opportunity for repair shops to make even more money by selling brake jobs and brake parts? For example, are brake rotors with grooves worn in them unsafe? Does it make a difference if the grooves are only slight compared to deep grooves? Who gets to interpret the tolerances and make the judgement? Defective brakes can be obvious if a wheel cylinder is leaking, a brake line is severely rusted, or pads are worn out. There are an equal number of parts where judgement is the final factor.
I believe in traffic safety and thorough vehicle inspections. In fact my career was devoted to having safe vehicles and drivers on the road. In this instance I question whether this is actually a safety improvement.
This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
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