Texas requires an annual safety inspections of motor vehicles. But the computerized system crashed on Wednesday and hasn't come back up yet.
San Antonio Express-News
Marc Duvoisin, Staff Writer
The state of Texas requires you to get your car inspected once a year to make sure the brakes, lights, steering and other systems are sound. It's a way to keep unsafe vehicles off the road.
But safety inspections are on hold for the time being. The Department of Public Safety says the inspection system has crashed. It did not say what caused the failure. Nor did it offer an estimate for when the problem would be resolved.
"The outage began on Aug. 23 and is ongoing," the department said. "This issue does not allow stations in safety-only counties to conduct proper inspections."
"Safety-only counties" are those where vehicle emissions tests are not required. You can get a fresh inspection sticker if your car passes the state's comprehensive safety inspection.
Bexar County and others in the San Antonio region are safety-only counties.
In 17 other counties in and around Houston, Dallas, Austin and El Paso, emissions tests also are required under federal law because of air quality concerns. Curiously, DPS said the outage that shut down the safety inspection system did not affect emissions tests.
"We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible," the agency said. It urged motorists to check the department's Facebook page for updates.