Don't get me started on the absolute shit show when ohio had 3 counties fail air quality testing so the EPA mandated emissions testing. The company they contracted the testing out to was run by retarded monkees with their heads up the asses answering to even more retarded monkees in the government.
That's an insult to monkees.
Most of this began because California has so freaking many people. Many went there for the weather- I get that an have been there many times because I have relatives but the first time was in late 1966 and when we went to Griffith Observatory, the smog was terrible. Years later, Milwaukee did a good job of catching up and from a short distance, a brown cloud could be seen over all of the freeways and heavy-traffic surface streets in the area. With 275+ million cars regularly on the roads, the air wouldn't be breathable.
The tailpipe testing worked, if the ones sticking the tube in knew what they were doing. Using the OBD port works as long as codes stored haven't been purged over time.
If anyone is in or goes to the Milwaukee area, they'll see and breathe the stench from vehicles that are past needing to be tuned up or repaired for major problems and this would have been a good place for the nobks who came up with Cash for clunkers to see why that program wouldn't work- people who can't afford to do a tuneup won't be able to afford the additional costs of owning a new car, but the pie in the sky politicians always want to be seen as 'doing things'. Yeah, they do a lot of things, but they usually don't know what they're doing, as Ethanol shows. That crap needs to go away. It's fine in a fuel system that was designed to use it, but if not and especially if the tank is vented, it's a complete Corn Flake.