For decades, the procedure to certify a vehicle for the road in Ontario consisted of a comprehensive inspection by a licensed technician at a licensed inspection facility.
The Motor Vehicle Inspection Station program (MVIS) with handwritten safety inspections is all that I have ever known. That is of course until now.
Ontario is now phasing out the old MVIS program and replacing it with a new and improved digital program called DriveON. Ontario has partnered with the Parsons Corporation and their Smart Vehicle Solutions division to deliver a new way of communicating with the vehicle, technician and the province for both safety inspections and heavy-duty emission testing. The new DriveON program is set to be fully integrated and operational for all registered facilities by Dec. 31, although the deadline has been extended to March 31, 2025 for light duty and structural inspection stations.
The actual inspection procedure and pass/fail criteria is not currently being addressed as it already went through a major overhaul in 2015. That’s when the antiquated inspection criteria were replaced with new guidelines that took into consideration changes in vehicle technology.
Technicians have been complaining for years that the MVIS procedure was desperately in need of an overhaul of both the inspection criteria and the old-school handwritten paper safety. The changes that occurred in 2015 addressed the inspection criteria only. Too often a vehicle owner would get inconsistent results from different facilities and let’s be honest, it was a system that was easily taken advantage of by unscrupulous inspection stations. While I truly believe the vast majority of inspection station operators take the inspection seriously and have your personal safety in mind, there are always the bad apples who take advantage of an easily corruptible process. All for an easy buck without a thought that they may be certifying a vehicle for the road that has no business being on the road.
The new DriveON system uses an android tablet that communicates with the ministry as the technician does the physical inspection. A strong WiFi signal is necessary for the inspection station. No other tablets can be used other than the DriveON supplied equipment. The tablet comes enclosed in a rugged case with several ports being accessible through lockable plastic covers. Once such port is used to plug in a dongle connected to an Onboard Diagnostic Port (OBD2) for performing emission tests. A wireless printer is included for stations that perform commercial and heavy-duty vehicle inspections requiring a yearly yellow sticker.
As the technician performs the inspection, they input measurements and take pictures that are uploaded to DriveON. Even though I have not had a ministry auditor contact me during an actual inspection, DriveON literature suggests that it is possible for an auditor to log on to your system while a technician is performing an inspection and view the inspection using the tablet’s onboard video camera.
A vehicle owner can visit the site to view a brief summary of the inspection along with PDF’s that can be printed showing the vehicle pass. Service Ontario locations also receive data for the corresponding vehicle identification number (VIN) indicating that the vehicle has passed a safety inspection. Just like the MVIS program, the DriveON inspection is valid for 36 days.
Will this new system solve all the problems with inconsistent and fraudulent safeties? While I do believe it will increase levels of awareness and straighten out those who slightly abuse the system, the habitual offenders will eventually discover a work around. But for now, being forced to take pictures of the vehicles sitting in our bays, plus pictures of compliance labels and pertinent pictures of brakes and tires will disrupt the blind safety. The blind safety is the exchange of cash for a safety certificate on a vehicle that never actually had an inspection.
Like any new technology, operating the tablet has a learning curve. The first half dozen safeties I personally performed were painfuland long. Learning how to navigate the menus and operate the finicky onboard camera was an adventure. Now that I’m a few months into the new system, it seems reasonably structured and navigation is much easier. A safety inspection does take an extra 15 minutes or so to complete with the addition of the photo-taking process. I do expect the cost of the safety inspection will rise slightly, but it shouldn’t be a dramatic increase.