Possible emission testing on cars

[88CRX]

Heard some crap on the radio this morning about possible road side emission testing in Calgary and/or Alberta.... can't find any news links... anyone have any more info on this?

[finboy]

kind of heard something about it, but wasn't paying a lot of attention.

[rc2002]

I looked but couldn't turn anything up either. I hope this gets off the ground fast.

See rant here:

http://forums.beyond.ca/st/190266/does-alberta-need-aircare-or-equivalent/

[DragZilla]

I heard that as well... they are trying to get the beaters off the street in exchange for some cash... and I think they said something about fines for vehicles that are not emission friendly

[QuasarCav]

They said that were looking at installing roadside smog cameras to catch older cars polluting. I heard this on X929 this morning on the news break.

:thumbsup:

[The Cosworth]

didn't they have voluntary roadside ones a couple years ago?

[skorpiius]

What I had read (somewhere), was they were looking to target two situations, cars that were spewing emissions 5 times their original design rate (using a roadside sniffer, kinda like a multinova but with sniffer instead of radar), and also cars with 'visible emissions', along with possibly a phone # to report those black smoke spewing vehicles.

It was in the Herald this week but I can't find it now.

[skorpiius]

Found it:

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=fd989ba6-60dc-4c53-896d-222c17c0b99c&k=78462&p=1

Ps Herald's search function sucks badly

As much as I support cars that are baaadly maintained and are spewing black smoke should be off the roads, I'm not sure I like the whole "what more than 5 yrs old? send it to the scrap yard and buy a new car!" attitude that I've read elsewhere. One also has to think of the pollution saved by not needing to create a new replacement vehicle. I think a better solution would have some way to upgrade the cats or such on old cars, that plus a properly tuned engine should have an effect.

[mx73someday]

Emissions testing based on engine size is lame. Do you really want to have roadside inspectors randomly pulling you over? There are already enough reasons they can pull you over, we don't need anymore.

[frozenrice]

Originally posted by skorpiius
Found it:

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=fd989ba6-60dc-4c53-896d-222c17c0b99c&k=78462&p=1

Ps Herald's search function sucks badly

As much as I support cars that are baaadly maintained and are spewing black smoke should be off the roads, I'm not sure I like the whole "what more than 5 yrs old? send it to the scrap yard and buy a new car!" attitude that I've read elsewhere. One also has to think of the pollution saved by not needing to create a new replacement vehicle. I think a better solution would have some way to upgrade the cats or such on old cars, that plus a properly tuned engine should have an effect.

I agree. Not everyone can afford to buy a new vehicle every 5 years either.

[skorpiius]

That said, I think if they do come out with emissions testing, basing a 'pass' on being withing a certain percentage over the emissions your car created *from the factory* as opposed to comparing the emissions to any newer cars or new standards, then in theory if your car is decently maintained you should pass no matter how old your car is, which seems fair.

[avow]

ok so i have a question then. my modified 91 mr2 probably doesn't do so well with the whole emissions thing. Its a mint car that has a lot of money in it. So say I get pulled over and ticketed for an emissions problem, fine whatever. Now What if, say, a corvette gets pulled over and is doing the same kind of emissions as my mr2 but because his car is within stock spec doesn't get a ticket... does that seem fair? or am i missing something here?

[skorpiius]

Well that's a good question, one thing I'm not certain of is with modern cars, do different engines performance levels have different emissions they need to meet? Like is a Corvette allowed to have higher emissions than say a Yaris? Or do they both have to fall below a certain level.
I had read that even cars 10 yrs ago emitted muuuuch more polution than a current car, so it's possible a modified 15 yr old car would emit much more than a new corvette. We need some more facts though.

Edit: I think I wasn't clear about something, that being that from all the stuff I've read about how little cars emit now, the odds of a stock corvette having as high emissions as a modified 91 mr2 seem slim. More likely if both cars had the same emissions it would be the corvette that's way above factory and would be more likely to get dinged than the MR2, unless of course the MR2 mods included chopping the cats :) But again this is not based on hard data so if anyone has any thing to share please do.

[Hash_man]

Lol depending on how much the government wants to give me for my car I might be up for getting rid of it hahah.

But seriously, my car is kind of a POS, I think it is still OK on the emmisions end of things though, but I think that ticketing people for emmisions would be dumb to try and impliment that now, but incentives to get older high polluting cars off the road is never a bad thing.

[blownz]

I think this is a much better idea than the new tax on big suv's. I hope they do this soon. But I also think at the same time they should start requiring safety inspections on older cars as well. Some of cars on the road just aren't safe and should be off the road.

[benyl]

Maybe they should check and make sure people aren't rolling on bald tires...

I would rather die in 20 years from inhaling exhaust than next week from some loser who didn't maintain his tires.

[blownz]

^ that would obviously be part of the safety inspections I mentioned, but I see what you are saying that it can be with old or new cars. Nothing will ever be perfect but anything is better than what they do now.

[walperstyle]

Trust me guys, I came from 10 years of this in Vancouver BC. It does nothing. Its only a money grab, and its owned by an american testing company. It made the air quality no better at all.

What makes it bad is vast ammounts of semi trucks and large industry. Not people in cars.

To those that dont agree with me, get out of the city, its a huge country, we are far from any 'threat to the evironment'.