The inspection stopped checking the car
Until 2010 New Jersey inspected brakes, steering, suspension, tyres, lights and the body. It does not any more. What remains is an emissions test, and on anything from 1996 onward that test reads the engine management system rather than looking at the vehicle.
So a car here can pass its inspection with pads at the wear indicator, a leaking damper on every corner and a tyre below tread depth, provided the check engine light is off.
That is a saving for anyone who maintains their car and a genuine risk for everyone else, and it makes one habit worth adopting: once a year, on the same date, with the wheels off. That is the substitute for what the state stopped doing.
The densest traffic in the country
New Jersey has more people per square mile than any other state, and the driving reflects it. The Turnpike, the Parkway, the approaches to two of the country's busiest crossings, and local roads carrying volumes they were never laid out for.
That is a brake problem more than anything else. Stop-start driving means the brakes do essentially all of the speed control, at full vehicle weight, with none of the aerodynamic drag that slows a car on an open road. Pads here are consumed at a mileage that would be half-life in a rural state.
It is also a cooling and fuel-system problem. Long periods at idle in traffic on a hot day put the cooling system under load with no airflow, and a fuel pump counts hours running rather than miles covered.
Salt from two directions
Winter road salting is heavy across the state. Along the shore there is a second mechanism entirely: salt-laden air, which corrodes from the outside in and works on connectors, aluminium and brake hardware rather than on structure.
A car that lives in Cape May and one that lives in Sussex County corrode differently and both corrode. The shore car looks sound underneath and has seized caliper slides and green connectors; the northern car has the classic salt-belt underside.
What the emissions test actually fails
Since it is the only test, it is worth knowing what stops a car passing.
- A lit malfunction indicator lamp. An automatic failure whatever the car is doing.
- Stored emissions codes, including pending ones.
- Readiness monitors that have not completed. This is the one people cause themselves — clearing a code switches the lamp off and resets every monitor at the same time, and the car then fails for incomplete readiness instead.
The route through is to fix the fault and then drive the car for several days of mixed use, including cold starts and a period at steady highway speed, before going back.
What the rules and the weather here actually say
- Does this state inspect your car
- A private passenger car takes an emissions-only test every two years; the annual mechanical safety test applies to commercial and livery plates instead. NJ Motor Vehicle Commission, read
- Emissions testing, and who is exempt
- Petrol vehicles of the 1996 model year and newer, rated 8,500 pounds or under, are tested every two years once they are five model years old. NJ Motor Vehicle Commission, read
- What goes on the roads in winter
- Rock salt goes down wetted with liquid calcium chloride or salt brine, which makes it start melting sooner than dry salt would. NJ DOT, read
- The climate, in a number
- Snowfall averages 40 to 50 inches a year in the north of the state against 10 to 15 inches in the far south. Office of the NJ State Climatologist, Rutgers, read
- The roads that decide how long brakes last
- Interstate 80 eastbound at Wharton in Morris County has opened into sinkholes more than once, one of them eleven feet square and about four feet deep. NJ DOT, read
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