The “Live Free or Die” state will become a bit freer next year. A last-minute addition to New Hampshire’s 2026 budget bill included a provision to eliminate mandatory vehicle safety inspections as of January 31, 2026. Emissions testing will also no longer be required by the end of September, possibly sooner if the EPA grants a waiver to permit it.
That will make New Hampshire the first state in New England to eliminate inspections entirely. Connecticut does not require regular safety inspections, but does require older cars and cars coming from outside the state to have an initial inspection. Other states require it every year or two, and most areas, including Connecticut, are subject to emissions testing as well.
Texas also recently eliminated long-standing safety inspection requirements. Making them go away in New Hampshire now brings the number of states requiring annual safety inspections down to just 14. Another 14 states have no safety inspections at all, and the others fall somewhere in between. For example, Rhode Island only requires an inspection every two years.
Inspections didn’t really work anyway
Predictably, the New Hampshire Auto Dealers Association is strongly against eliminating inspections. They claim this will put more unsafe vehicles on the road. But cars in states without inspections aren’t exactly falling apart like the Bluesmobile, either. What it will do is prevent unscrupulous mechanics from making extra money on unneeded repairs by holding that coveted inspection sticker ransom. This is an all-too-common story that readers have told us about time and time again.
I had to give up my Volkswagen Jetta Smyth Ute project when I moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire in 2019. It had no problem passing safety, and it was exempt from Massachusetts’ 15-year rolling exemption for emissions testing. At the time, New Hampshire required everything 1996 and newer to pass emissions. (The current law, which is about to be eliminated, is a 20-year rolling exemption.) Just try to get an older VW to pass emissions, even if it isn’t a lying, cheating diesel.
I was new to the state, so I didn’t “know a guy” who would just slap a sticker on anyway — which is itself a massive loophole in the state inspection scheme — so I ended up letting it go, since I couldn’t afford the expensive repairs it would take to shut that pesky check engine light off. All this comes to an end next year. It won’t bring back my Jetta Ute project, but it will save other enthusiasts from the same fate.
