Why do so many US States have a relaxed vehicle inspection policy?

Question

According to Wikipedia, many US states have a relaxed policy for car inspection regulations:

Maryland requires an inspection prior to registration or transfer of ownership only. Several states have abolished their safety inspection programs in recent years, claiming that these programs do not reduce accidents and are merely a tax on vehicle owners.

Some states, including Florida, Kentucky and Minnesota, have discontinued their testing programs in recent years with approval from the federal government

The same article mentions various regulations throughout the world and most of them are more or less "car inspection is mandatory every 2 years after a certain vehicle age".

According to this article mandatory inspections might help with lowering accidents:

The observed probability of accident involvement (as measured by either rate) was found to increase with time since last inspection. This result supports the alternative hypothesis that a mandatory safety inspection has an immediate safety benefit which decreases over time.

[EDIT] Since comments correctly point out that car inspections might lead to less air pollution, I am also including a reference to sustain this. This article argues that emissions checks might lead to reduce of air pollution with certain substances:

Using over a decade of data from the state of California, we show an increase in emissions-related repairs, as proxied by passing post-repair inspections, corresponds to local improvement in CO, NOx and PM10 levels, but with little change in local O3.

However, additional gains from the Smog Check program are decreasing with time, as almost all benefits of repairs and re-inspections come from fixing failing older model cars (1985 and prior) with inferior emissions control technology. As older technology cars disappear from the road, the differential between failing and repaired emissions decreases.

Question: Why do so many US States have a relaxed (or none at all in some cases) vehicle inspection policy? This seems to be quite unusual when referenced to other countries and also seems to be less safe.

Answer 1

There's a few reasons why, but the two largest are

1. It's effectively a tax on cars (and a regressive tax at that). A Texas legislator noted that when introducing a bill to repeal Texas' law

   So let’s call these inspections what they really are: a tax on Texans’ time and money. [It] costs Texans an annual $267 million in fees alone. What’s arguably worse is the tax on our time — the program forces more than 50,000 trips to the inspection station every single day, resulting in more than 9 million wasted hours every year. That adds up to $203 million in lost wages, based on average salary data…This type of flat cost disproportionately affects lower-income Texans, and while most begrudge the annual trip to the station, these individuals are truly harmed by this unnecessary and counterproductive mandate.

2. There's no evidence they actually promote safety

   According to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, there is no evidence to indicate that mandatory safety inspection programs reduce accidents. The report demonstrates that crash rates are roughly the same in states that have them as in those that do not.

Answer 2

I'm a gear-head and I live in north Houston, an area with a high population density and we have both safety and emissions inspections. I've put a moderate amount of thought into why or why not to have these inspections over the years and I have overtime come to side with having them. One conclusion I have come to after looking into this is that these inspections are mainly found in and around high population areas, which makes sense. All areas of high population density come with increased requirements on the citizens, taxes (both higher and more of them), parking fees, a variety of restrictions which likely come with fees and the list goes on. The point is that since there are more of us we must all do more to safeguard our way of life since one false move can have higher consequences in these areas of high population density versus lower population areas. If you disagree with them then just move, there are counties that do not require safety or emissions inspections...