Not Every Texas County is Getting Rid of State Inspections

For the longest time, Texas was a two-sticker state. You had to have a sticker to show that your car was inspected and when it expired on top.

After that, you could get your vehicle inspected to get the registration sticker that would go under the inspection sticker. Eventually, the inspection sticker was dropped but still required to get a new registration sticker.

Starting in 2025, you will no longer need to get a vehicle inspection to register your vehicle...unless you live in select Texas counties.

State Inspections

Getting your car inspected is an absolute pain. Unfortunately, it is a pain we all have to endure and all have to do to keep our vehicles legal every year. There has been a debate in Texas over the last five to six years about whether a vehicle inspection is even needed anymore with all the sensors that modern cars use to monitor your car's systems.

Other states have already done away with vehicle inspections. Starting January 1, 2025, you will no longer have to get a vehicle inspection to renew your registration.

For those that live in a major metropolitan area like around Houston or Dallas or Austin, drivers will still have to get an emissions test, and pass it, to be able to renew their registration. That does include one East Texas county, Kaufman.

The other counties that will require those emissions tests are Harris, Fort Bend, Galveston, Montgomery, Brazoria, Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, Travis, Williamson and El Paso counties. The counties around San Antonio will be added at a later date (KHOU).

So We Don't Have to Pay That Inspection Fee, Right?

We still have to pay that $7.50 inspection fee, it will be added to your registration fee. The state is not even hiding the fact that we still have to pay that fee because they labeled it as an "Inspection Program Replacement Fee" (KHOU). Wow. Doesn't matter if you live in one of those counties requiring the emissions test or not, that $7.50 is still tacked on.

I guess the silver lining of all this is that we don't have to waste our time finding a shop that does state inspections because not all of them did, and worry if our tires had just enough tread to get us by until the next year. We'll just need to make sure on our own that our turn signal bulbs are still good.

READ MORE: Beware - The Texas Toe Biter is Back to Inflict Pain in the State

READ MORE: State Fair of Texas Greeter Big Tex Was Once an East Texas Santa