[DoingIsLearning]

> Do you think EU politicians didn't know exactly what they were doing when they gave responsibility for reporting emissions figures to automakers and then blindly trusted them

Most medical devices will carry out private bio-safety tests. Most electronics will perform private EMC tests. I agree it's crap but automotive is not some special case or part of a conspiracy.

A lot of regulated industries self-regulate. The regulatory bodies trust the results documented by manufacturers because they realistically have no money/time/expertise to do it themselves.

Post diesel gate "The new rules, finalized in 2018, give the Commission the right to carry out compliance checks on vehicles, order bloc-wide model recalls and slap fines of €30,000 per car on cheating producers. The EU's science wing, the Joint Research Centre, has spent €7 million on two new testing facilities that will perform snap checks, a Commission official said.". [0]

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/new-eu-car-rules-aim-to-stop...

[goodpoint]

> automotive is not ... part of a conspiracy

A group of people secretly breaking the law is exactly a conspiracy, by definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspire

> A lot of regulated industries self-regulate

Not so easy. Traffic engineers, meteorologists, environmental agencies and other [EU-funded] organizations monitor the air quality constantly and have detailed statistics on how many cars of each model are on the road.

You can easily do the math and see that the numbers do not match expectations.

You cannot tell which brand is cheating but you can tell that the pollution is much, much higher than expected.