Living in Ohio (no inspection "rust belt" state), I saw a minivan's axle pop loose ahead of me on the highway, which sent it into the concrete barrier pretty much instantly. Perhaps you don't have rust issues where you live, but requiring some minimum mechanical function to register a car should be everywhere in my opinion. Generally inspections are either mechanical/safety or emissions. Emissions are based on the car model in every state I've lived in, so as long as you don't modify your car to blow smoke it'll pass. Mechanical inspections are to make sure there's no major rust, the brakes work, the lights work, tires aren't bald, etc.

The UK has less than half as many road deaths than the US, even after factoring in the difference in miles driven per year. Annual inspection is one of the reasons for that.

There are some perfectly reasonable arguments against the cost-effectiveness of mandatory vehicle inspection, but I have some doubts about the validity of those arguments. Road safety and traffic law enforcement involve a lot of complex interrelated factors; Creating a culture of road safety is difficult to distil into discrete interventions.

There's a libertarian argument that driving a car with bald tires is a matter of individual liberty, but obviously that's a vastly broader argument than the question of mandatory inspection. If you're going to have laws against driving a car with bald tires, it's less onerous and more effective to primarily enforce those laws through administrative rather than criminal justice mechanisms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Not having vehicle inspections is a concept that's completely foreign to European me. It's literally letting people very lightly educated in how to operate heavy machinery operate heavy machinery that at one (long gone) point probably worked as it should.

Unfortunately - that's the only way to force some drivers to get their car brakes fixed.

Exported used car from Japan is considered to good quality, that's partially thanks to vehicle inspection system per 1/2 year.