HONOLULU(KHON2) -- The state is looking to increase the cost of a vehicle safety inspection. KHON spoke to one safety inspector who said the state should increase the price more.
It will soon likely cost a little more to get your vehicle safety inspection.
The Department of Transportation is proposing an annual increase from $25 to $25.75. The 75 cent increase will cover fees paid by inspection stations to the vendor who handles the electronic safety check forms.
Scott Williams, vice president at Lex Brodies Tire Company, said they do between 20 to 40 safety checks a day.
"The time it takes to bring vehicles in and do safety checks properly, especially if they're older vehicles where they really need to be checked thoroughly, the $25 is not a lot," Williams explained. "For shops that do it, in most cases, when you factor in the personnel that does the safety check they're really not making much money on them."
And the price hasn't gone up in years.
"If you ask us, we would say you should add at least $5 a safety check, maybe eve $10," Williams said.
Even then he said they wouldn't really make any money off of it.
And getting certified to do vehicle safety inspections is a process.
"I brought the paperwork," Williams said holding a thick stack of pappers up. "This is the law that we have to study and have to apply when we do an inspection for safety checks and this manual was put out by the DOT … it's 36 page policy and procedure of doing a proper safety inspection."
Williams said that a few years ago DOT changed the procedure to where we needed to do it with an iPad. Going digital has made things more efficient but he said it also had a downside.
"A lot of mom-and-pop shops actually stopped doing safety checks at that time cause there was amount of technology that they had to bring their shop up to that they just decided not to do it and they just bowed out," he explained.
Now there are fewer shops doing safety checks.
"So the shops that are still doing safety checks get flooded," he added, "And we try to help as many customers as we can."
Regardless of price, Williams said he does believe safety inspections help keep our roads safer.
"We do find a lot of customers that have bald tires, and light bulbs that are out, wipers that are just falling apart so the process is good," he said.
DOT will be holding a public hearing on December 10th to discuss the prince increase.