When a tampered unit is discovered by authorities, the vehicle owner isn’t the only one on the hook for a fine.
Current EPA tampering laws allow the government to levy fines on service providers who not only perform tampering, but also those who identify tampering during emission system maintenance and fail to bring the vehicle to compliance.
MISS THE START? Here’s Part I of our special report on tampering.
Which means, you don’t even have to perform tampering to get busted, Peter Savage, director of fleet solutions at Clarke Power Services and chairman of TMC’s Emissions Tampering task force, says. A service provider ignoring a clear violation is fined just the same as the service provider who actually performed the tampering.
And at $37,500 per incident, the fines are quite harsh.
Unfortunately that information has not been clearly communicated to the commercial vehicle market.
A recent Successful Dealer reader survey uncovered only 55 percent of dealers were aware that $37,500 is the maximum fine that can be levied on a service provider who offers tampering. Nearly 24 percent of responders thought the fine was $3,750, and almost 15 percent responded that there isn’t a fine at all. (See graph below for survey results.)
