Driving cross country with expired tags - how to avoid police?

Doug Smith W9WI wrote:

Doesn't Louisiana use renewal stickers? (I thought all 50 states did?)

Around here, (Tennessee) when you first get your plate they put a
sticker on it, showing what month it expires - it might say "JUL" in
large letters. You get another sticker that might say "2006", showing
that it expires at the end of July, 2006. When you renew, you get a
sticker that says "2007", you stick it over the top of "2006" to show
the plate is valid for another year. The procedure is identical in
Wisconsin.

An officer doesn't have to get very close to be able to read both
stickers, and if he does he knows the plate is (or isn't) expired. He
doesn't have to run it through the computer to know.


Most states do use renewal stickers. Stickers are usually colour coded as a
secondary means of identifying the expiry date in addition to the month and
year on the sticker. In Ontario they use a sequence of colours, with white
backgrounds and coloured alpha numerics and then revers it to coloured
backgrounds with white alpha numerics.
You can try to peel a sticker of a valid plate and stick it on your expired
plate. You can try using paint or ink to forge a valid looking sticker. You
can smear something on the sticker to make it less obvious. It doesn't really
matter because officers punch in a lot of plates, especially if they are
working in pairs. If you get caught with expired plates you get charged for
the expired plates. If you get caught with an improper validation sticker you
end up with two tickets, one for the expired plates and one for the second
offence committed to try to hide the first one.

On 2006-07-19 07:32:55 -0400, (John F. Carr) said:

In article . com,
Sapphyre wrote:

wrote:
Any suggestions about what route I should
take or how I can avoid getting pulled over?

You can avoid being pulled over by having valid tags (which means your
car passes safety and is registered where you live).

Having valid tags does not prevent police from pulling you over.

That's about the most idiotically hyperpicky statement I've heard in
some time. Perhaps you REALLY think you're saying something useful??
Why in tunket do you think so??

Arif Khokar wrote:

Try driving through Summersville, WV with out-of-state tags. A front
plate is a dead giveaway there.

I did. They never bothered me...

On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 05:25:32 GMT, Carole Allen wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:09:34 -0700, Hatunen wrote:
I believe getting current tags usually involves paying
registration fees for the years tags weren't obtained, which in
some states and for some cars can amount to a fair piece of
money.

Only fair, as those fees help to maintain the roads the deadbeat with
the expired plates has been using.

This may be confusing the registration, which is a fixed fee every year, and
property taxes on the vehicle, which go down every year (assuming the rate stays
the same) as the vehicle depreciates.

It's likely that the OP will only have to pay the current year's registration,
but will be liable for back taxes in the intervening years between when the
vehicle was last registered and when it is registered again.


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sechumlib wrote:

I gather you see no difference between slightly exceeding the speed
limit and driving without a valid registration or insurance. Both the
same scope of offense, right?

I used to see all sorts of driver conviction records. Speeding tends to be the
single most common infraction on records and it is not uncommon to see only
speeding tickets, or maybe one or two thrown in for failing to yield and
failing to wear a seatbelt. But when you see convictions for things like
expired plates there are usually a lot of other violations listed too. It's
easy to speed, and it's easy to develop other bad habits. When it comes to
things like valid licences, permits and insurance, there are some people who
just don't give a damn. There are a lot of people driving around with suspended
licences, and most of them have long multiple violations on their records, and
for a variety of things.

In other words.... I don't doubt that someone could only have speeding
convictions on their record, and I certainly don't doubt that someone with a
record for driving with expired plates also has speeding violations on their
record.

In article .com,
says...


I'm going to be driving from Washington, DC to northern Louisiana with
an LA license plate that expired a couple of years ago. Insurance and
driver's license are okay. Any suggestions about what route I should
take or how I can avoid getting pulled over? I'm a pretty safe driver,
don't speed...going to try and make sure my car is clean and not
conspicuous...
[SNIP]

Years ago (and it could well be the same) license/registration in LA was US$6
..00/2 years. I'd just contact Baton Rouge and register by either phone or
Internet. You might not get the little stickers in time, but the receipt
should suffice with the police, especially as your driver's license and
insurance are current.

Safe trip,
Hunt

In article .com,
says...


I'm going to be driving from Washington, DC to northern Louisiana with
an LA license plate that expired a couple of years ago. Insurance and
driver's license are okay. Any suggestions about what route I should
take or how I can avoid getting pulled over? I'm a pretty safe driver,
don't speed...going to try and make sure my car is clean and not
conspicuous...
[SNIP again]

OK, maybe I misread your plans a bit. Is the registration in the DC Area, or
LA? The price for registration, that I quoted was for LA. Don't know about DC,
VA, etc. Still, I'd register the thing before the trip. Most states are on-
line with DMV now. Put it on a credit card, and pay it off slowly.

Hunt

Hatunen wrote:
On 18 Jul 2006 12:48:06 -0700, "
wrote:

I used to live next door to a cop. He told me once that tags that are
seriously out of date raise a giant red flag to any cop who sees them.

Call your local Bureau of Motor Vehicles and they'll tell you how to
get up-to-date tags. Driving with tags that old isn't worth the risk.

I believe getting current tags usually involves paying
registration fees for the years tags weren't obtained, which in
some states and for some cars can amount to a fair piece of
money.

This would imply that every car must be registered every year it
exists, whether in storage, on the road, or whatever. What state has
these laws?

On 19 Jul 2006 11:32:18 GMT, John F. Carr wrote:

In article .com,
Mike Tantillo wrote:
I assume you'd still have to do something to get the cop's attention in
order to prompt them to punch in the number. Unless they're literally
bringing up license plate info as they drive around "just for the fun
of it"...

Some of them do that.

In my former job as a newspaper editor, we kept a police scanner in the office
so we could keep track of what was going on in case there was something we
needed to cover. One of the frequencies was for the Kentucky State Police. I was
absent-mindedly listening one day when the officers called in a plate number on
the Mountain Parkway in Clark County and my ears perked up when I heard them
report that the truck was a 1990 Chevy belonging to my dad!

He had forgotten to put his renewal sticker on his license plate. The police had
noticed it and called in the license number. When they found out that the plate
was current, they didn't pull him over.

Next time I saw him, I asked him if he went to Winchester that day. He laughed
and said yes and asked how I knew. When I told him about it, he told me that he
remembered a trooper following him for awhile but then they went ahead and
passed him without pulling him over.

However, one year my renewal sticker didn't stick to the plate because it was
damp and I just kept it stapled to my registration receipt. One night a state
trooper stopped me on my way home from work and asked about the expired plate. I
told him what had happened and showed him the sticker, which of course made
everything OK. I did end up getting a replacement sticker, but I found it odd
that he didn't call my plate number in but instead decided to pull me over.
Could have been that my dad was traveling on a four-lane iin the daytime and I
was on a rural road at night, and on a road that links a dry county to a wet
one. Maybe he thought he could get a DUI if he stopped me for expired tags.


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On 19 Jul 2006 07:17:30 -0700, wrote:

Arif Khokar wrote:

Try driving through Summersville, WV with out-of-state tags. A front
plate is a dead giveaway there.

I did. They never bothered me...

Yeah, but how fast did you drive? ;-)


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