A month ago I took my car in for the inspection, but the state hadn't sent the stickers yet so they couldn't inspect my car. I had Firestone give it a tune-up first to make sure it met the standards. After getting home I accidentally left my key in the ignition on the utility setting. Next time I went out to use my car the battery was drained. At the time I wasn't aware of it but this cleared the statistics collected by the On Board Diagnostics and the next time I took it in for inspection there were several tests that showed "Not Ready". So they couldn't inspect my car but, of course, they had stickers. I had skipped a few opportunities because of rain. When the streets are wet they won't inspect your car because of safety reasons since they have to drive it and test your brakes. So after taking it in and finding this out the service guy said I had to drive it from 50 to 60 miles more and "it should go ready". So I did that. I brought it in and there were three tests that showed "Not Ready". He told me to drive it another 50 to 60 miles and I did. After brining it back in the same tests showed "Not Ready". This happened two more times and it is still not ready. The service guy told me to look on the Internet and find some information for what I need to do during the drive so that the onboard diagnostics would do the tests. It is difficult to do all of these procedures because the the highways and streets don't allow you to go from 60 MPH to 20 by not using your brakes and only coasting down to below 20 MPH because you usually run into a stop sign or red light after getting off the freeway by using a ramp. Houston has a law that you can't drive on the shoulder so you have to chance someone getting behind you and honking your horn because you are going too slow (doing the tests). I found a procedure that was written by a guy that seemed to be knowledgeable so I drove another 80 miles and brought it back to the inspecting station. He got out his OBD device and the tests still showed "Not Ready". I have now burned half a tank of fuel and wasted it all driving over 300 miles (500 km?) in the name of fuel efficiency and eliminating carbon emissions and my car still can't complete this stupid inspection. Now I risk getting a ticket doing all this driving because my inspection sticker is 8 days expired. Someone in the government should be hanged for this.
