Years and years ago the City of Cincinnati had a Safety Inspection program and a dedicated building run by the city to perform vehicle inspections. It had about 6 lanes of traffic going thru it all day five days a week. All of the inspections were mechanical in nature, such as headlight alignment, front end alignment, horn function, and light function. There was a drum or such device, as mentioned in a post below, to measure brake function and balance. System was set in motion sometime in the thirties and residents were required to pass twice a year. Only out of state cars from Ky or Ind would ever be seen with burnt out headlites or ones that pointed off to the moon.

At least two of the lanes were dedicated to trucks and had larger equipment to handle the larger physics. And, yes, the city practiced what it preached. The gas and diesel city trucks had to go thru the lane as well. Thankfully back then there was no emissions krap to contend with. Only bad thing was that the car was hooked to a moving chain at the entry and was drug thru the lane and if memory serves me correctly with the engine off. Neither power steering nor power brakes was much in vogue at the time, so that didn't matter. However if your vehicle, like my '29 Ford coupe, was hard to start after a hot shutdown, there were problems. To comply I took my car to a neighboring town whose inspection sticker was accepted, but where they had the owner drive thru and the car had to remain running. The car had rust issues in the trunk and the WOOD floorboard had a piece broken out, but those were not issues! Had to endure the wrath of new car owners when mine passed inspection and theirs didn't, as my 'A' was not pretty just ran like a top.

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1961 190Db retired
1968 220D/8 325,000
1983 300D 164,150