Comment by NyxWulf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NyxWulf | Hacker News Reader

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I knew it! Roughly a year ago I was driving home from work at night. My registration was expired by a few days, and I drove past an officer in a parking lot. As I was passing him, I knew my plate was expired, so I was looking at his plate to see if I would be able to determine from that distance if the plates were expired. So I was scrutinizing his plates to see how much detail I could see. I have better than 20/20 eyesight, and I knew there was no way I could see that level of detail at the distance he was at. So imagine my surprise when he comes after me immediately and pulls me over.

More out of curiosity than anything I asked him how he knew my plate was expired, his response was "I have really good eyes". I've thought back on that experience over the last year, and I knew the technology for reading a license plate wasn't hard, but I didn't know how widespread the use was. After reading this piece and seeing the picture of those cameras, which are mounted in that area, I'd bet they are using it to give expired registration tickets too.

Not sure how registration works where you are, in Calif (and other states) the yearly registration sticker is color coded by year. So, while they may have sought to read the "month" sticker, they might have just looked for the color of the tag as an indicator.

I want to say that each month also has a unique color. So the two color combo can easily be translated to the month/year your tag expires. A friend of mine drove for a long time using stickers he had peeled off of other cars. As long as he kept is driving legal, he would pass the "color checks". However, once he did something that gave a LEO cause to run his plate... clearly he was busted for it. Kind of interesting when you think that these cameras would have caught him straight away.

Another scenario, when people have paid for their registration but for one reason or another have forgotten to place the sticker on their plate. Those people would not get hit with these camera since their plate would not come back as expired. They would still fail the "color check" which usually can be explained to the LEO. If not, it is usually just a fix-it ticket.

In Utah the year is the only one that changes color, all of the months are white. That's why I was looking at his plates, to see if I could see even the letters on his plate. Granted I'm not a trained observer of registration violations and maybe it was observable to someone who is. Given the distance and the visibility during the night I'm pretty skeptical. It's just a sneaking suspicion I've had - because I know I'd want to use those license plate readers in exactly that why if I was in their place.

Data point: in Feb 2012 I got pulled over by CHP (California Highway Patrol) for exactly this (registration sticker was still stuck to the registration paper in my glovebox, as it was mailed to me). So he was actually using his eyes...

Sounds like that state needs to implement anti-tamper stickers like you see in retail stores. They're scored in several places, so if you try to unpeel them once they've been stuck to something, they'll come off in pieces.

I use a razor blade to (a) remove all existing annual stickers from the plate (makes it harder to remove the top sticker intact), and (b) cut an "X" in the new sticker once I've applied it.

Is registration tag theft a problem where you live? That seems totally incredulous to me.

I'm not aware whether it is or not. But once I saw how easy it was to remove a sticker-stack intact using a razor blade, I adopted the habit. The effort involved is minimal (I keep a single-edge razor blade in my toolbox for utility reasons), so why not? Just another part of car maintenance, like changing the oil & filter...

The tamper-resistant tags're a good idea --the only drawback I can see is that in the process of trying to apply the sticker, the person applying the tags might destroy the tag accidentally --so, on balance they might figure that they'll take the occasional scofflaw in exchange of fewer complaints.

They might already exist, actually. I know that a couple states do tamper-resistant stickers for the windshield registration sticker. It doesn't really make sense, though -- those are on the inside of the car, they're comparatively quite large, and they're a royal PITA to take off already due to the strong adhesive they use.

Can you lose your license for stealing other people's registration stickers? I know some states will take your license if you steal gas from a gas station.

Is this really a novelty in the states?

In the UK most police forces have traffic units with ANPR cameras on their vehicles, hooked up to the various national databases to provide details of the vehicle, whether it is insured, MOT'd (tested), stolen, has any markers on it (previously linked to drugs, firearms etc.) and so on.

No, it's been around for years AFAIK -- I guess we're just now getting around to making a stink about it.

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