Florida did a study like that before they did away with the state inspections in about 1976. They found that far less than 1% of the accidents were caused by mechanical issues that the vehicle inspections would or should have caught. One of the main problems with vehicle inspection in Florida is that so many of the vehicles (over 60% in many areas) here are from out of state so the state vehicle inspection do nothing to weed out those.Can someone point me to any sort of study or statistic that indicates what percentage of accidents are caused by improperly maintained vehicles - because my guess is its pretty much zero.
When talking about state safety inspections always keep in mind that some accidents are caused purely by mechanical faults but in most cases (bad brakes, bad tires, bad headlights, bad wipers, cracked windshields, etc etc etc) the driver was aware of the fault before the accident and should have already fixed it.