Saturday, December 30, 2017

New law going into effect replacing dealership advertising plates with numbered temporary registration plates was inspired in part by the August 2013 death of 35-year-old pedestrian Michael Bonanomi,


Because he was hit by a Mercedes with no license plates, it was never identified, caught, and jailed.

Until now, a windshield sticker, or folded piece of registration paperwork from the DMV was taped to the inside of the windshield to alert meter maids to the registration dates.

But, now California is switching over to numbered temporary plates straight from the dealership, so that by Jan 1 2019, any vehicle without a DMV plate will be illegal on sight.

Simple. No plate, there is something illegal going on, and the vehicle can be stopped by law enforcement to handle ticketing or towing for whatever is the problem, from no registration at all, to no insurance (equals no legal driving ability and no plates).

Isn't it time that the state busts illegal drivers? Take away the plates from drunk drivers, take away the cars from illegally driving uninsured motorists, and the roads become a bit safer, and who ever gets into a collision can be more easily and quickly identified if they try to run for it.


AB 516 will modernize California’s vehicle identification system by assigning temporary license plates at the point of sale before a vehicle drives off the lot," according to the office of the lawmaker who wrote the bill, Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Kevin Mullin.

Mullin said that he pressed the Department of Motor Vehicles to start sooner but that officials said they needed more time to develop a system to issue the temporary plates.

Toll cheats (mostly San Fran bay) cause 15 million dollars of loss of revenue, the news says.

That dollar loss is growing, according to records obtained by The San Fransico Chronicle. More than 2.5 million vehicles passed through FasTrak lanes at the seven state-owned bridges in 2016 without license plates or toll tags and without stopping to hand over cash — a nearly fivefold increase from a decade ago.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Toll-cheats-without-license-plates-costing-Bay-11212053.php

This also closes the Steve Jobs Loophole.

One of the many things Steve Jobs was famous for was his refusal to put a license plate on the back of his car, a Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG. Jobs—or someone close to him—spotted a loophole in California DMV regulations allowing six months of grace before a license plate had to be attached to a new car. As a result, the Apple supremo maintained a rolling six-month lease on a series of new SL55 AMGs, replacing one with another just before the grace period ran out.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-closed-california-wants-temporary-license-plates/

But opens the way for the Texas Paper Plate Problem.

People simply print their own, and you're still right back at zero gain on people doing illegal things.

After Texas switched to temp plates, investigators say paper plate fraud exploded. “I believe that the crime has tripled,” said one undercover detective. Undercover detectives bought two fake paper plates from a man in a gas station parking lot with a printer in his back seat.

The Dallas County Clean Air Task Force was a group whose mission was to get fake paper tags off the road. The task force was made up of four traffic enforcement deputies and ten detectives.

They say 90 percent of the paper plates on the roads are fake. The plates are mainly used to hide either the vehicle or the driver from the law.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2017/09/25/task-force-busting-fake-license-plates-forced-to-shut-down/

It could be worse, Minnesota had a 40 year old computer mainframe still as their DMV source of registrations, since 1976. They blew 90 million, double their budget, to no one's surprise, and blew it, getting less done with more delays, as they relied on govt contracting to make the choices on a computer system.  https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/minnesota/articles/2017-09-11/lawmakers-hear-headaches-with-minnesotas-new-license-system

4 comments:

  1. What if you buy a car out of state and drive it to California? I know South Carolina keeps the old plates, I'm sure others do as well.

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    1. California Smog makes doing that a really bad idea. Unless it's so old it doesn't have to be smogged anymore, I really advise you to never even consider buying out of state. It's really nothing to deal with plates if you're going to try and butt heads over the smog with the state of California.

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    2. Not really. I bought my 2014 TSX Wagon in Texas and had no problem getting it smogged here in CA

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  2. Why did the state need time to develop a system to issue the temporary plates? Ohio and Michigan have been using temp plates for at least the 30 years that I've been driving. They are up to 45 days in Ohio now.

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