Letter to the Editor

 Dear Editor:

   The cost of an annual vehicle state inspection went up to $39.50 recently. Why don’t we just take the “bad cars” off the road by giving the polluters a new car?

   A few of us ran the numbers and found that to do this would cost us about the same as the inspection fee.

   According to a Star-Telegram article, there are 2,000,000 registered vehicles in Tarrant County and of these, 6,000 to 8,000 cars fail the test.

   Bet we could get a fine new car for $10,000 each if we picked up the phone and placed an order for 8,000 of them—the total cost would be $80,000,000. Divide that by 2,000,000 vehicles, and the cost to each owner would be $40, about the same cost as the inspection fee!

   Just think, in one year we would be rid of the polluting cars and perhaps do away with the annual inspection.

   The real question is are passenger cars getting too much blame? How can only 8,000 “bad cars” cause so much pollution? Do you suppose there might be other causes such as the vast number of freight trucks, factory emissions, trains? Or is it just windless days? How about investing in huge wind fans?

Chuck Feldstein
NE Senior Ed Instructor