No MOT Required in USA

[bad company]

Greetings from America. You see some really dangerous wrecks on the road here, I took these phots but there’s several more. The pickup truck was was on the Arizona side of the border with California. He was filling all those containers with cheaper petrol/gas.

[soad]

Doesn’t look good.

[fttm canada]

Not in Canada either, but they still must be supposedly road legal . We pay for the plate which covers third party insurance then gas up and go , so easy .

[Joe M]

You can't take away an Americans constitutional human rights to drive a dangerous sh**heap.

[Geekman]

Some states do have the equivalent of MOTs, some don't.

[dvs_dave]

It varies from state to state. Some do (eg Texas), some don’t (eg Florida), some only care about emissions (eg Arizona), but there are no overall federal laws governing it. Up to each state to decide what they want to do.

https://www.findlaw.com/traffic/drivers-license-ve...

Edited by dvs_dave on Friday 8th March 03:49

[Ian Geary]

My brother lives in Oregon. We chatted about this once- apparently though you will get hammered in the event of an accident and your faulty car is deemed responsible.

It was a while ago though, so can't remember if this was by insurance companies or being sued by the other party

[NNH]

Here in California they test rigorously for emissions (making sure your 300hp+ engine is in perfect health) but pay no attention to tyres, brakes, or anything else. It's utterly terrifying to share a freeway with Californians in the rain.

[vikingaero]

I remember visiting Eire in the 90's and seeing cars with holes in the doors that you could fit both arms through. When I questioned it, it was because they had no equivalent of an MOT.

But back the the US. Some states now have state inspections of vehicles.

[Truckosaurus]

From my in depth research (watching youtube) even in places with regulations about roadworthiness the punishments are minor anyway.

[Sensibleboy]

New York last summer. I suppose it's not structural.

[Deerfoot]

There's a YouTube channel called Just rolled in that has a lot of st-heap American based vehicles that are presented for repair.

More often or not, despite terminal corrosion, bald tyres and questionable home repairs the owners will decline all repairs and drive away.

[captain_cynic]

Insurance is optional too... So you can bet a lot of said stheaps are uninsured.

[Jader1973]

Same in Australia except NSW (because they are aholes).

In a couple of states you need to do one to transfer ownership, but in some you never need one at all.

[anonymous-user]

Sensibleboy said:

New York last summer. I suppose it's not structural.

Where was it registered? NY requires a yearly "Inspection", similar to MOT

https://dmv.ny.gov/inspections

[AlexGSi2000]

Deerfoot said:

There's a YouTube channel called Just rolled in that has a lot of st-heap American based vehicles that are presented for repair.

More often or not, despite terminal corrosion, bald tyres and questionable home repairs the owners will decline all repairs and drive away.

Its addictive and shocking at the same time.
Been sat there watching in disbelief at times.

[Red9zero]

I often wonder about some of the builds on Kindig, GMG etc and how they register them for the road. Even Dennis Collins was driving a Ferrari race car on the road in a recent Coffee Walk episode, but glossed over the mods to make it road legal.

[supacool1]

Have you not seen programs like Roadkill? They will take a barn find car, make it stop and go and then road trip across the US back to California. Some of the cars are real hoopties- special mention the Rotsun, Drag-uar, Mazda-rati etc...

Special special mention - the old old episode there they take a Chevy Malibu that was buried in the dirt in Arizona which they get running and road trip to California. That car had a stop sign for a floor as it was very holey....

[Truckosaurus]

supacool1 said:

Have you not seen programs like Roadkill?....

They often outright say in the video that the car is illegal, but as I mentioned above, they don't seem to care about getting caught as the fine is minimal.

[J4CKO]

Part of why the USA has 12.9 road deaths per 100k population, UK has 2.9.

Usually cite driving bigger distances, but not sure you can explain away four an a bit times more that way, badly maintained/dangerous cars must play a part.

I saw some utter stters driving round when I was working in the states, worst was the Atlanta suburbs as I think there was a fair bit of deprivation, but despite a lack of money everyone had a car as there wasnt much option. The major cities are better, dont see as many wrecks.