On an regular basis, either annually or semi-annually, in the US (certainly in California), your highway vehicle must pass a “smog check”. You know, the dreaded visit to the “smog check” shop where if your car passes, you only waste 1 hour of your life, but if it fails, there goes a month.
They have the same thing in the EU, it’s called ITV (Inspeccion Tecnica de Vehiculos), aka Vehicle Technical inspection. Like in California, you have to have your highway vehicle inspected on a regular basis. The newer the vehicle, the less frequent the inspection. That’s where the similarities end, the ITV is much more involved than a “smog check”; it checks for road-worthiness, pollution, safety and you can schedule the inspection online.
Online scheduling: This is the recommended option. In fact, if you call to schedule an inspection, they’ll normally refer you to their website. There are various vendors for the service, where we lived they had Certio and Applus. We never found a big difference between the two providers. During the scheduling phase, you provide your vehicles license number and select a time/date.
When you arrive at the office your car will form a line. If the line is so long that your vehicle is outside “the building”, then you keep pulling up until you reach the building. Once you reach the building you need to go into the office. In the office you show them two documents; Technical Inspection sheet and Owner’s slip (Permiso de circulacion). Sometimes they’ll ask for the insurance card, but the EU is pretty well computerized and can check your insurance through their system. If all checks well, you pay and return to the vehicle.
Road-worthiness and safety: As part of the ITV check, the technician will make sure the vehicle is not falling apart 🙂 and that it is safe. You stay in the car and they direct you to drive it through various stations. Similar to a quick-oil-change shop. In these stations they’ll check things like; working lights, properly adjusted headlights, tires condition, sound level, smog (pollution), braking power, working seat belts, broken or cracked windshields, etc. It’s a pretty thorough check.
If your vehicle fails any of the checks they’ll write it up and come talk to you. There are two types of failures; critical and non-critical. A critical failure is anything that makes the vehicle not road-worthy. Those failures mean you cannot drive off and must tow the vehicle to a shop. A non-critical failure means you can drive to have it fixed and return for inspection.
If the vehicle passes the inspection, the technician will replace the current sticker on the windshield with a new one.
On you will go until the next inspection.
