More Americans are using fake license plates

That made me laugh, thank you

I believe we need to move to e ink (or similar tech) based licence plates. The numbers would change every few minutes but still would be cryptographically tied to an owner if you both have a time stamp and a proper decryption key. The idea would be that if you had the proper authorization (police, DMV, etc) and a time stamp you could see the owner of a vehicle, but it would hinder 3rd party private alpr dragnet systems. It wouldn’t change much for entities like police, but it could put in place a system of accountability (ie: decryption rules set at the state level instead of local level, etc)

New cars don't even need license plates to be tracked. They transmit telemetry over 5G. The car companies sell this data to whoever they want, including law enforcement.

Right now you can probably disable the cell radio by disconnecting the antenna but if that becomes popular I have no doubts that cars will be changed to refuse to operate without regular connections.

The recent infrastructure bill (H.R. 3684) includes a requirement for cars to have anti-drunk driving tech included, which includes driver-facing cameras.

All of this data will be sold to the highest bidder.

You made me realize the painful difficulty in defining a distinction between legit use by police (which is occasionally used catching stolen cars, etc, and which makes the news) and creepy Orwellian surveillance.

> prohibiting police from using computer vision isn't it either; they'll just buy the data from a private vendor like ring

The answer to this would be to legislate what data private vendors like ring can and can't collect.

In the end I feel legislation is really the only option; some fancy stuff with crypto like one of the other commenters mentions sounds both complex and error-prone to implement and have it work well, and also risks being cracked either by reverse-engineering or just leaked decryption keys. And if $entity wants to track your car – or anything else – they can probably do so anyway one way or the other. The only real option without having to play whack-a-mole is decent legislation.

Newer systems don't even need a license plate, they learn the overall appearance of the car.

This is the crux of it: NYC's finest make up a disproportionate fraction of license plate forgery and defacement cases. Enforcement cannot occur, because to enforce these laws would be to ticket and fine their own (or their owns' families).

I've long suggested that the idea of a singular policing arm is, itself, inherently problematic.

Separation of powers is the key to a functioning government, and should be for the policing arm of the executive. Peace officers should obviously be tasked with the day-to-day of the policing.

However, enforcement of policing rules (within the executive branch) should come from a separate meta-police force based in the judicial branch, confirmed (and impeached/removed) by the legislative branch. This meta-police force would have full policing powers, but their jurisdiction would only extend to peace officers and members of the policing or district attorney's hierarchy.

Basically, you could rob a bank in front of these meta-police, and they could do nothing, but they could fully investigate a police officer accused of intentionally obscuring their plates, or unequally enforcing the law against folks with police benevolent society cards.

The idea that the executive branch, alone, can act, to me, is crazy. The Judicial branch is supposed to care about justice. They should have a limited arm to act much like the legislative branch has a limited arm to enforce subpoenas without the executive.

Are you meant to have a smaller registration plate (same registration as your car) on the bike rack? That's how it works in Australia.

This article talks about both unreadable and fake plates. I think you're talking about unreadable plates.

In that case you remove your tape or other obstruction before the inspection and put it back right after.

The police in New York support this kind of obstruction when done by the right people. The person quoted in the article removed an obstruction from a license plate of a car parked on the street. The driver called the cops, who took the side of the person evading traffic law.

If the goal is to avoid getting tickets from automated processes, I'd imagine they put back on the real one for inspection, then swap it back when they get home.

Enforcement on car inspections is lax. You might receive additional citations or an increased fine for having an expired inspection, but a lot of New York drivers (who I assume are not unique) will simply ignore tickets or pretend that they never received them (which is easy when they frequently come in the form of a letter tucked under your wiper, rather than a digital record).

There are plenty of cars in my neighborhood that are patently unsafe by the city and state's standards, or are modified in ways that wouldn't pass inspection. Many of them belong to cops, who drive into my neighborhood to police it from outside of the city.

> As I understand New York state requires car inspections every 12 months.

you could just make it readable prior to inspection then make it unreadable again.

My dealer mailed me my plates. Sees like lack of motivation is both you and the dealer.

I can imagine some dealership clerk coming into work and shrugging shoulders as they see the growing pile of plates .

Maybe that clerk also grabs a couple and sells them on the corner to some getaway driver. Seems like having your plate floating out there is a bad idea. At best nothing happens. At worst, you get your door knocked in and a mid night beating from the local swat team. Lawyering up, proving it wasn’t you, etc.

I did this for a while too. I'd suggest actually keeping the plates in the vehicle with you. Some grumpy highway patrol can decide to tow the vehicle unless you fix it then and there. Some may do it anyway. Each state has different time limits for ticket vs tow/impound.

That was my first thought. If I walked outside and saw some douchebag in a paperboy hat writing on my vehicle with a permanent marker I would start throwing rocks at them. The little game of fraud cat and mouse I play is between me and the government.

I worked w these systems, lot of them don’t program more than 7th character in the wildcard search function. Most temp plates here are 8 chars.

I was taught to always assure that the drivers on the cross street are stopping, and its saved me a couple times, particularly in the rain when people think their car will continue to brake in 10' despite the roads now being covered with a mixture of oil, tire sludge and water which is almost as slick as ice.

But, yes I find myself not having a lot of respect for much of traffic control these days, when the cities can't be bothered to even make the lights flash at 3 AM, and instead are stopping me at every single light down a road for exactly zero cross traffic. Or when there is a light out, and a cop sitting in their car waiting for someone to not treat it like a 4 way stop instead of getting out and directing traffic.

So, while I don't live in a place with automated ticketing, I can see the allure of fake license plates. My brother in law's house just had a light added on the cross street he uses to leave the neighborhood. Whats the first thing its doing? Long light cycles with short interruptions and ticketing everyone who runs it. Again because while that intersection hasn't needed a light for the past 40 years, and the town he is in hasn't grown much it got one after some drunk teenager caused a big accident. So, now it backs up, and instead of just turning left after a 10 seconds or so with a gap, one can sit there for multiple minutes because there are a dozen cars backed up trying to get out. And of course the ticket is like $150 or something, most of which goes to the private corp that put the camera in.

I don't think that's a good explanation at all. People are murdering less than a few decades ago, beating their kids less, stealing fewer car stereos. There might indeed be moral decay, but that doesn't answer why fake license plates and not some other thing.

I suspect the reason for greater fake license plate use is the same reason for most products picking up: people are selling them, people are hearing about them, etc.

I suspect speeding has many causes, among them the fact that cars these days can accelerate easier and ride more gently at high speeds. People mostly drive however feels comfortable.

I think this did actually happen but specifically starting in 2020 and I am only talking about traffic violations and not general crime. The article even mentions it and I have posted links to NHTSA statistics showing an increase in road traffic deaths per mile that started in 2020 and then continued to increase.

People blamed cars, pandemic stress, and decaying roads but I don't think it's any of those. I think the pullback in policing roads is a big part of it. Road rage incidents have increased in some regions too, I assume all regions, but these aren't necessarily counted nationwide.

I think it's possible that the empty roads in 2020 caused people to become accustomed to speeding and driving without other drivers on the road and caused people to degenerate as far as dealing with other people on the roads. I say this because speeding offenses increased since 2020 so maybe all these things are correlated. People became accustomed to not having to follow road traffic rules, and following sociable and safe driving, and get annoyed when they have to now. Police aren't enforcing it either. Just my thoughts.

“Moral decay” doesn’t really offer much of an explanation though. That’s basically just saying “people are doing bad things more these days because people care less about doing good things these days.”

Looking both ways even when the light is green has become a habit of mine.

Over forty years ago my lead foot saved my life. I was first off the line and I punched it when the light turned green. Just as I crossed the intersection I saw a car in my rear-view mirror whiz past through the red light at ~80MPH. If I had been slower, I would be dead.

Do you think there's a connection to this behaviour and the type of vehicle they drive? With SUVs becoming super huge, maybe people feel that they don't have to stop because they won't be coming off worse in an accident?

> I think it’s just moral decay.

This is a cop out; a simple sounding excuse to just throw up your hands, say "kids these days" and then go back to your armchair.

The fact is, you have a lot of problems that you're not dealing with, from stroads [1] to an increase in the worst kind of "automated" driving systems that leave people less able to remain alert for road hazards, to an unhealthy increase in inequality that leads to antisocial behavior in the pissed off underclass... you got problems. Look to some of your European and Asian neighbors if you want help with solutions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad

I've noticed the same shift.

Drivers are worse now than 10-15 years ago. Drivers are more aggressive (tailgating, rolling stops, speeding, ...), more sociopathic (tinted windows, louder pipes, larger vehicles, fake license plates,...), more negligent (bald tires, texting-and-driving, bumpers ripped off jagged metal sticking out, ...).

Another data point. Dashcams are on the rise, and they are truly the indicator technology of a low-trust society (remember the early car carnage internet videos, those were nearly always from russia or eastern europe, good times!). Wherever dashcams flourish, social contract is fraying.

It does not have to be like this. Many countries in Europe are making quite the opposite shift. Just recently was in London. Unreal! That place is so much more airy and welcoming than just 10-15 years ago. Covent Garden was positively quiet; so many electric cars and utility vehicles, much slower travel speeds, fewer streets, ... phenomenal. Once you experience it, and especially if you have a memory of the dark times, nobody in their right mind will want to turn back.

And wrt:

> People suck.

Do allow me a short digression and light hyperbole.

Maybe it's time to start pointing fingers, something americans, especially on the progressive-side, are too squeamish to do. In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans. Maybe we should take heed his advice, and it's time for the righteous to start calling out the wicked. Some people truly are crap, exhibit trash behaviors, and are making the world, quite simply, _worse_. We need to be confident in our judgements, and have the courage to clearly delineate right from wrong. As americans, live-and-let-live is ingrained in our DNA, but d*mn somethings gotta give here, drivers are really out of control.

It's because no one is enforcing these rules. I've driven drunk and ran red lights and sped until I got nailed for each of these. I still cut in line (or whatever the term is for cars) when I can because in 20 years of urban driving I saw a cop pull someone over for that ONCE. So why wait in line when every time 10 other cars cut the line.

I feel the same way about not putting your shopping cart back in the proper place after loading your car. It's the one test of whether someone is willing to do the right thing absent any reward or punishment, and so many people completely fail the test. I generally lean libertarian, but it's a demonstration on people's inability to govern themselves.

During the BLM protests, and then when COVID hit, police "quiet quit" on traffic enforcement, despite little to no danger to them (and high availability of the vaccine, which many did not avail themselves of.)

Unfortunately, the result has been skyrocketing injuries and deaths.

> Phoenix, which I consider the national capitol of bad drivers

I would have agreed, but then I experienced El Paso.

> no soul drives the 55 speed limit on I-17, but it’s getting measurably worse.

True. Feels like combat.

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FWIW, I put some Jesus themed bling on my car. It seemed to help in Texas. Phoenix, not so much.

An expressway near me has a speed limit of 100 km/h. Most times I drive it, the fastest driver I might see is < 105 km/h. Vast majority will be at 99-101 km/h.

In the US, a significant number of people blatantly go 10-30+ km/h over the highway limits. What causes this?

It is “moral decay” almost by definition. But that’s pointless because it only shifts the question to what led to the “moral decay”.

Usually those crying out “moral decay” do so because they have certain pet theories, but there is no evidence for those pet theories, and more often than not there is enough evidence to disprove their pet theory.

Red light cameras are proven to reduce the most dangerous intersection crashes (T-bones) at the expense of a slight increase in rear-end collisions (which are the fault of the second driver for following too closely, and likely both drivers for speeding.)

Before anyone starts bleating about companies changing cycle times: that's only happened in a few areas and most municipalities and states have caught on to the scam. It's an easy legislative fix to require light timings be based off federal standards, which they should be anyway.

I am absolutely not a fan of fixed or hidden speed cameras, but red light cameras are legitimately good because you have zero reason or excuse to go through a red or speed through an intersection.

Did you run a red light?

Traffic enforcement should REQUIRE a police officer to be physically present at the time of the incident OR a retroactive issue related to an accident that happened.

The officer's presence would encourage safer driving at problematic intersections.

You'd probably like Axios where the journalism is presented in bullet points.

Some psycho with a generic SUV and no license can easily kill a couple people. It's so easy people do it accidentally all the time.