What is Failed Safety Inspection in Carfax? Find out More!
In the U.S., vehicles are usually required at intervals, either annually or biannually, to undergo a state-mandated safety inspection.
And then these inspections check for items related to tires, lights, wipers, horn, brakes, suspension, mirrors, seat belts, and more. In short, it ensures that the vehicle is functioning just fine. But what if the Carfax report shows the phrase “Failed Safety Inspection Carfax”? What does that mean?
Well, it usually indicates that the inspection station or the reporting body logged the vehicle as not meeting one or more criteria at that time.
Keep reading to explore more!
“Failed Safety Inspection” Status: An Overview
This status doesn’t mean that your car is unsafe or wrecked for years. However, it does show that something was serious enough to trigger a fail condition and detect some faults.
It’s worth noting that not all safety inspection items are the same: a cracked windshield, bald tires, a missing mirror, or a brake fluid leak. Any of these may cause a failure depending on the state.
For example, if a car’s washer fluid system fails to spray jets of liquid onto its windshield efficiently enough, it can simply lead to a failed inspection.
What Caused a Vehicle to Fail the Inspection?
Now that you have an overview of what this status shows, let’s dig more into what possibly causes a vehicle to get this status. Some common reasons are:
-Tires with very low tread, dry rot, and shifted belts.
-Windshield cracks in the driver’s line of sight or visible pitting and scratching.
-Seat belts that don’t retract, fail to latch, or have broken webbing.
-Broken, missing, or significantly cracked mirrors.
-Brakes, e.g., metal-to-metal contact between drums and shoes, leaking brake fluid, or a pedal that needs to go halfway to stop.
-Horn inoperative or too quiet, suspension that’s leaking, steering joints too loose.
-n some states, smog tests and emissions are separate but often show up on reliable vehicle history reports from CheapVHR.
Why Is This a Red Flag (And Sometimes Not)?
There are times when this status can be concerning, but other times, you may ignore it, according to the situation.
Let’s dig into its details:
Why It’s Concerning:
-) A failure signals that the vehicle was not compliant with basic safety standards at the time. That may indicate deferred maintenance, neglect, or a condition that could trigger a bigger problem.
-) If the failure occurred very recently and there’s not a single record of a subsequent successful inspection, it always raises concerns about whether the issue was fixed or not.
-) Buyers often see a “Failed Safety Inspection Carfax” with other negative entries, such as many owners, auction resale, salvage, and accidental history. All these combined point to possible risks.
