"The recent article by Stephanie Blows et al. claims that introducing periodic vehicle inspections will reduce injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes. Their paper found that vehicles without a current cer tif icate of inspection had a greater chance of being involved in an injury crash. However, it takes an enormous leap of faith to conclude that this association is causative. First, they included all injury crashes in their study irrespective of whether it was due to a vehicle defect or not. A 1999 review prepared for the Federal Office of Road Safety found that in Australia the percentage of vehicles involved in injury crashes that were caused by a vehicle defect ranged from only 2% to 8%. The authors were also unable to demonstrate an association between periodic motor vehicle inspections and reduced crash rates in Australian jurisdictions or in any previous study. The associations found in this study are similar to those seen in other studies looking at crash involvement of unlicensed or unregistered drivers. These behaviours are symptomatic of a petty criminal subculture and are no way causative in themselves. To suggest that somehow compelling these drivers to subject their vehicles to periodic inspections will make them safer drivers is a complete nonsense." (Author/publisher)
Abstract