Everyone wants to breathe clean air. But programs to achieve this end can be expensive, so many laws have been written to gradually help spread the cost.
The latest target is the older automobile.Older cars produce high amounts of pollution. In the Los Angeles area, an oil company offered to buy pre-1971 cars for $700. These cars were then put through emissions tests. Some of them produced as much as 260 times the emissions of current models.
But getting older cars off the road is no small feat. Older vehicles are not only usually cheaper to buy, they also cost less to maintain.
Most vehicles built before 1978, for example, do not have the mini-computers in the engines that help control pollution and increase fuel economy. This new technology, however, also makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the backyard mechanic to fix it without expensive test equipment.
Many states also indirectly contribute to the retention of older cars by assessing property taxes on cars. New cars can become even more expensive at tax time.
One system that reduces pollution from older cars requires a tail pipe test in order to renew registration. The biggest problem with the older cars often is the lack of maintenance. A well-tuned older car can be a pretty good neighbor, but keeping an older car up to "like new" standards is expensive and rarely done.
If the owners of older cars are required to spend the money to bring them into compliance, they may decide to get rid of them.
The gradual tightening of the tail pipe pollution laws has produced, in some areas, a mini-civil war. Windshields are being taken and their inspection stickers stolen to be put on cars that could not pass the test.
Also keeping a careful eye on the efforts to get old cars off the road are the antique car collectors.
Collector cars present very little in the way of an air pollution threat. Virtually all collectors keep their cars in excellent mechanical shape and most drive them only a handful of miles each year. But as the standards tighten, they can outstrip the ability to maintain the car, making it impossible to tune the cars within the specifications.
Another worry for the antique auto buff is the lack of parts caused by the destruction of older cars in junk yard crushers.
Lawmakers, on the other hand, are concerned that protections for car collectors will become loopholes that will generally permit old polluting cars to stay on the roads.
Finding ways to clean up the air by getting old polluting cars off the roads, and at the same time protecting the concerns of those who wish to preserve old cars, is no easy task.