Through the Eyes of a Stranger: Vehicle Emissions Test

~ Clarissa

You’ve got to love Americans, people. I just had my very first emissions test done and I’m experiencing a culture shock of massive proportions.

Everything was organized in the most  efficient, reasonable, and caring way possible. There was even a little booth with chairs for me to stay in during the test. A booth! With chairs! The whole test lasted about 90 seconds, yet somebody had thought of placing chairs there for my comfort.

That person who said, “Hey, let’s bring in a couple of chairs for people who are waiting” – I love that human being. I’m not like that and I’m from a culture where nobody is like that. But I can recognize and admire this as a superior way of being.

I had set aside several hours for the emissions test but it just took a few minutes. I was not a driver back in my country but I know drivers. From their stories, I found out that everything that has to do with the governmental supervision of driving is torture. N, who is a very mild and gentle person, still has violent fantasies of subjecting Russian road police to extreme forms of torture. So I assumed the emissions test here in the US would be long and painful.

Instead, I discovered the chairs in a booth that I still can’t get over. I’m very lucky to have experienced the alternative so that now I don’t take such things for granted.

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Published by Clarissa

6 thoughts on “Through the Eyes of a Stranger: Vehicle Emissions Test”

  1. Did you do this in the smaller town where you live or in the bigger city near you? Because my experience with DMVs has been unilaterally terrible. (Probably not Soviet terrible. But still quite unpleasant.) But I have almost always been to the DMV in mid to large cities. So that might make a difference.

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    1. P.S. But it does make me happy to hear that you think Americans are nice. I like feeling like my countrymen are generally pleasant and decent people. 🙂

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  2. I don’t know if you borrowed money or paid outright for the car but the automobile manufacturer still owns the car or more specifically owns the software that runs the car. You are only licensed to use the car’s software. This brings up the interesting possibilities of software license fees in the future but also the possibility that you could only get it repaired at the dealership since independent car mechanics could not get access to the software.

    http://consumerist.com/2015/05/20/gm-that-car-you-bought-were-really-the-ones-who-own-it/

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    1. It’s a used vehicle, so we just paid outright. But you are absolutely right about the software. I can’t get it repaired anywhere but at this single special place which is very inconveniently located, by the way.

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