TRL | Periodic vehicle inspections - from safety device to climate change tool

This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the literature about regular vehicle inspections, and the regulatory and advisory processes governing their content. Initially, vehicle inspections started in industrialised countries over 50 years ago, aimed at maintaining the mechanical performance of vehicles to ensure road safety. Since that time, many countries have adopted similar programmes. EU Directives have required minimum standards across Europe, and the UN is encouraging the adoption of similar standards elsewhere. Meanwhile, managing vehicle emissions has been an important motivation for introducing inspection and maintenance regimes in parts of North America, and many Asian countries.
Most use of I/Mdata has focused on either road safety or vehicle emissions issues. It is clear that there is the potential to use the data for a wider range of purposes. However, there are also a number of important issues to be resolved if the data are to be used for robust analysis of policy issues relating to traffic trends, energy use and climate change. Within the UK, analysis on this topic is progressing. Given the increasing standardisation of vehicle inspection regimes, it appears that techniques developed in the UK have the potential to be of benefit on a global basis. If appropriate analytical techniques can be developed, the increasingly widespread availability of relatively standardised data about car ownership and use being collected through vehicle inspection regimes worldwide could potentially provide an invaluable and cost-effective resource for improving understanding of traffic trends, energy use and vehicle-related greenhouse gas and local air pollutant emissions.

Periodic vehicle inspections - from safety device to climate change tool

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