New Zealand has had safety inspections since the '30's - depression era and NZ being a long way from spare parts, there were some very unsafe cars on the road. It was a basic tyres, brakes, lights and suspension check, done at any garage. Although I would've been able to do them in 1974 after I qualified as a mechanic, I didn't start doing them until 1984, and have done them since until a couple of weeks ago. It went along just fine, although there was some abuse of the system...often the lube guy would do the tests, not a mechanic, as the mechanics didn't want to be dragged off jobs. Once I worked next to Herb's Garage, if Herb was busy, his wife did them.
But then in the late '80's we started to get huge amounts of used Japanese domestic imports, today JDI's outsell new cars every year...our car market is largely a used car market. We had no car industry, but assembled a large range of CKD vehicles. We have a New Zealand Safety Standard, and for cars it was based largely on UK, Euro, Australian and US/Canada standards. But, cars built for the Japanese domestic market don't meet standards for the rest of the world, it's their own little system. So, all of a sudden, and it really was sudden, we had cars on our roads that don't meet our safety standards - something had to be done.
Our little book of a few pages became a large document that is being constantly updated, rules changed almostly monthly. And now we had to become an official inspector, able to pass tests to show we know the book inside and out. We have audits, they come and check the site, check our documentation, check the inspector's knowledge, and hopefully get a pass...it was always a stressfull time. The test are entered on a computer into a national database.
A change of jobs, I now work on off road motorcycles, so in Feb my inspectors certificate will expire.