There's a public health concern for food fixed in private residences too. Hear about the incident a few weeks ago where people got botulism at a church potluck?
Yeah, again, you have to choose to participate in that. Still not the same thing.
And the idea is a commercial vehicle (especially one operating as a taxi) is going to spend more time on the road, meaning it is going to need more maintenance sooner than a private vehicle driving possibly well over 100 miles a day compared to 40-50 for a private vehicle. As such regular vehicle inspections are a very good idea.
But regular vehicle inspections are already a very good idea, that's my point. In most places in the USA the only vehicles which are getting them are commercial vehicles. In California they want to be real sure that your emissions are within a compliant range, and if a cop notices your headlights are misaimed they can write you a ticket and send you to a headlight alignment station, but there are no mandatory inspections which ensure that your suspension won't fly apart while you go down the road, let alone that you aren't dripping oil everywhere and causing hazards for everyone, if not on the day of then eventually when the rain comes.
Either vehicle inspections are a good idea for everyone, or they aren't. Further, I continue to object to the notion of a "commercial vehicle". There should be only one standard of behavior for drivers no matter whether they are a joyrider, a commuter, a delivery driver, or even a cop or ambulance driver — with the caveat that the latter sometimes will be putting on the siren and lights, and the rest of us should be getting out of the way. However, in all other ways, everyone should be following the same rules for a variety of reasons, only one of which is "fairness".
Primarily, "the system" only works when we can form expectations. A good example here is that you have to be able to expect people not to come across the double yellow line and drive right up in your face. Part of that is their behavior, and part of that is having their vehicle in proper working condition with good tires, suspension, steering linkages... some of which is typically not inspected well anywhere in the US, again, not on a mandatory basis. You usually only find out that something is wrong when you spend money to have it addressed. Because I don't wait for the vehicle to fail when I feel something getting sloppy, I know that the idler arms in the Astro are loose but still within spec, and that I don't have a bad ball joint in the suspension linkages. I also knew that I had a bad wheel bearing, and had it replaced. (I did the other one, but I hurt my back doing some other stuff and wasn't up to this one.) But you can look around and see cars which obviously aren't receiving the attention they need, because nobody is making the owners do it.
So yeah, regular vehicle inspections are a very good idea, but they're also a good idea for absolutely everyone. If you want to base the schedule on mileage and not on time, I can completely agree with that idea. It shouldn't matter if I drive 100,000 miles a year for fun or for work, either way that's putting more wear on the vehicle. That ignores the additional duty that the start-stop cycle of typical taxi use puts on a vehicle, but the proliferation of hybrids as taxis is reducing that problem anyhow, by taking much of the load off the typical wear components.
Eventually we'll probably get GPS monitoring whether we like it or not, and then they can build really-fine grained fee structures and inspection regimens. Whoopee.