Studies of traffic safety typically assume that policies are adopted to further the public interest, thereby ignoring the political motives for policy. Since political motives can influence the design or enforcement of policies, accounting for political motives has relevance for evaluating policy effectiveness. We examine the political motives concerning a frequently-studied traffic safety policy: state-mandated vehicle safety inspection. We distinguish between public interest and special interest explanations for safety inspection. Our econometric models examine the incidence of inspection across states, and determinants of regulated inspection fees. The evidence strongly rejects a public interest explanation, but special interest hypotheses also do not prove entirely satisfactory. Since recent studies find that inspections fail to improve highway safety, we attribute the continued existence of inspection programs to political transaction costs rather than to the demands of interest groups.
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