Inspection Illogic

Took our van, or "Baby Huey" as Debbie and I affectionately call it - for inspection this morning. This is only a bi-annual requirement in NJ, and the van is now ten years old and has 155K+ miles on it (kenna hurra! - we just had to replace our other car and need to squeeze as much as we can out of this one). Given Huey's age, I thought it would take another holiday miracle, maybe just a drop shy of that famous eight-day oil burn, for it to pass. Sure enough, when the van made it through the last station in the inspection line, the attendant affixed a red "Rejected" sticker to the window.

But when the attendant called me over, it turned out to be a textbook good news / bad news report. The van had passed for emissions and all engine-related tests. The problem? The lights over the rear license plate were out.

OK, so I'm glad that the van is still road safe and the engine still pollution-passable, but give me a break! Rear license plate lights are hardly standard on all cars. So if Baby Huey had no such lights, it would have passed, but because it has them and the bulbs were burned out, it failed! And now I have the expense of fixing them, and the annoyance of bringing the car back for re-inspection.

If Kirk had to take the Enterprise for inspection in this state, Spock would certainly find this system"highly illogical". (And you just know they'd fail it based the jury-rigging that Scotty was always doing!)