Every year, Norma Dennis gets "so dang frustrated" with her habit of waiting until the last minute to renew her vehicle registration.

She frets about leaving a vital document behind. Headed into the H-E-B on Buffalo Speedway Monday morning, she was ready for a fight.

"Don't even get me started on last year," Dennis said. "That stuff with the stickers. I didn't know what to do."

Texas dropped its familiar green safety inspection sticker a year ago, creating confusion for millions of vehicle and trailer owners in the state.

Though inspections didn't change - but might soon, as some lawmakers want to scrap them - the stickers went away as the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles shifted to a database system to verify compliance with state rules.

Though this year's crop of registrations is not expected to result in the confusion and computer problems that plagued the process last year, some people may forget the new rules.

"I think we could have some confusion and the reason I say that is we have taken a decades-old process and kind of changed it," said Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Mike Sullivan, whose office handles vehicle registration.

Inspection rules, procedures and costs are unchanged, although $7 of the fee that used to be paid to the person conducting the inspection is now paid to the county assessor tax-collector.

The total cost in Harris County is $39.75.

Last year, owners of the roughly 17 million registered personal vehicles and trailers in Texas were able to renew, provided their inspection was current and valid. In other words, someone who renewed in March, and whose registration expired in April, did not have to undergo an inspection.

Now inspections and registration are closely tied.

Lawmakers changed the rules in 2013, effective last year, requiring drivers to pass inspection within 90 days of renewing the vehicle registration.

Inspection results are uploaded into a state database, though officials suggest keeping the paper copy of the inspection report that stations and mechanics are required to provide after a vehicle passes inspection.

Clearing up confusion

Sullivan said it is possible vehicle owners could start showing up without inspections because many didn't need to conduct one last year.

It's also possible some drivers erred in the past 12 months.

Someone whose car was inspected when its sticker expired in November will run afoul of the 90-day requirement if they try to renew their registration in April.

"Thank goodness the station told me," said retiree Vernon Thompson, 70, who tried to renew his inspection in January even though his registration wouldn't expire until June. "If it had been someplace else, they might have scammed me."

To clear up confusion, state and Harris County officials are directing people to websites tailored to registration renewal questions. TxDMV officials also produced a calendar showing people the earliest day they can renew their registration.

Sullivan also recently extended the grace period for people registering their vehicle in one of many retail locations - notably grocery stores - to 30 days.

Previously, stores could only renew vehicles within five days of when the registration expired.

Trailers troublesome

Despite efforts to alert people before registrations come due, the changes alarmed and angered some.

Owners of trailers with a gross weight of 4,500 or more were especially upset when the new rules went into effect.

"Some people are truly dumbfounded about it because the inspection has not been enforced in the past," Sullivan said. Officers may simply have given a warning for an expired inspection sticker, but now that a valid inspection is a condition of registration, "that's more serious and you're going to get a ticket."

As people grow accustom to the trailer rules - and registration renewals in general with the single sticker - Sullivan said the process will return to normal.

"I hope that this is the last Texas DMV change for a long time because you want to make it easy for them," he said.

End of inspections

Lawmakers, meanwhile, are getting closer to eliminating inspections, though nothing can happen until the Legislature meets next year.

Texas is one of only 16 states that require an annual vehicle safety inspection, and the trend lately has been for states to eliminate the tests.

"I think the best studies have been pretty consistent to show that we have not been able to document safety benefits in terms of reductions in fatalities and injuries," said Daniel Sutter, an economy professor at Troy University in Alabama who has studied mandatory vehicle inspections.

Though those who conduct the inspections defend them as helpful to keeping cars and trucks well-maintained, lawmakers at a January Texas Senate Transportation Committee hearing noted Texans spent $267 million on inspections.

"That is an incredible burden to Texans," said State Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas.

Huffines, whose family is well-known for its auto dealerships, said mechanics often conduct free inspections that catch many of the same defects found in paid inspections.

"The free market is going to work and it is very efficient in what works and what doesn't," Huffines said.