Munich77

I think the majority of people will be back up.

The difference is that people in Bavaria know how to drive in snow.

CEB

Right - and proper equipment is mandated.

Munich77

Good point - I wish they had TUEV in the US. That would take a lot of the dangerous clunkers off the road.

jahquan3

My town finally is up and running today. I think we were one of the last towns in the NorthEast to get back to some normalcy. My kids were happy as hell to be out of school for 3 days.

CEB

Yep. When I lived in MD there were no inspections other than emissions except when the car was bought. This means that the wheels can be falling off, the body or frame rusting off as long as the car passed emissions every two years all was well.

At least now in Virginia there is a periodic cursory inspection that will at least take the worst offenders off the road.

When I was in Munich, I went through bot TUV and the annual inspection on the military base. While the army inspection was considered a joke by TUV, it still was far more severe than anything in the states. The inspection took a good hour and anything resembling rust would be attacked with a screwdriver and a hammer - if the resulting hole was bigger than a dime, the car failed.

Even though I knew all the guys there - and they knew my cars - they would go through my cars point by point. Here in Virginia, the inspection station takes about 5 minutes to eyeball the car. If it looks like it is in good condition then they spend another 2 minutes tooting the horn and stepping on the brake pedal. If the car looks bad then they spend 5 minutes writing up the worst issues.