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Comment by InitialLastName | Hacker News Reader

For anyone from outside the US concerned about this: car inspection standards are state-specific. Many states have far more stringent standards.

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Yup. Here's a fun hack - you can drive car in EU on US plates, due to international agreements. In that case, you don't have to follow local car inspection standards, but inspection standards of your home country.

Get a plate from US state that has no inspections? You need no inspections at all!

There's usually a time limit on that. Last I checked in my country it's six months before you have to register the car, get local plates, and pay VRT (vehicle registration tax) + VAT. Including the cost of VRT in the VAT calculation, resulting in double taxation.

You can't put foreign plates on an irish registered car without first bringing it out of the country and registering it abroad either. I don't think there's any tax due on re-importing a car that's already been registered however. (you even get the same plate numbers since they're consistently mapped 1-to-1 VIN-to-plate forever)

There is a legal limit, yes, but nobody checks it, so you can do it indefinitely. Around here, there's even a lot of people driving on fake "foreign" plates.

Only 12 states require routine safety inspections.

The civilized world gets smaller by the day...

That depends on what you mean by Civilized.

I 100% oppose these inspections, and fully supported the initiative to remove them from my state.

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