Why are states obsessed with front license plates?

Here in alberta front plates were abandoned in the early 90s when the province realized that getting rid of them would save the province a ton of money.

oldopelguy said:

Here in SD they change the color of the registration decals on the plates every year and you can rest assured that the highway patrol officer passing you the other direction has plenty of time to spot the little blip of last year's color before you pass.  

A trooper friend of mine mentioned in passing one time that on a lot of cars the high visibility reflective material on the plate is often more visible than the factory reflectors. In a state where the odds are good that eventually I will be stuck in the snow in a low visibility weather situation maybe the extra reflective material is a good idea. 

In WA we're required plates at both ends... but the expiration month/year stickers only go on the rear.

Yes PA talked about all the money it would save when it dropped the plate stickers then increased the yearly registration fee’s by quite a bit. 

Ian F said:

PA used to have yearly registration stickers but they dropped them a couple of years ago. A bean counter determined the cost of the stickers (producing and mailing them) was more than subsidizing local PDs to purchase plate recognition equipment. 

CT did that too.  It was definitely to save money, plus they figured a good portion of the sticker checks were in situations where the cop could just look it up on his laptop anyway.  NY still does the stickers for whatever reason (and only the inspection ones are color coded, reg sticker has to actually be readable to know if it's current). 

My state wants to outlaw front plates, but only if your car cost more than $60K. So I pulled them all off.

A front plate is useful when crossing the border, they run your plates before you pull up to the window.

With all this linking of the front plate to cops being able to identify you, revenue generation and such pretty much ignores the fact that that's pretty much the whole point of the rear plate as well. If your objection is anything other than aesthetics, you probably should re-evaluate your driving anyway, since why else do you need that extra level of anonymity?

Didn’t realize this was a contentious issue.    I grew up in Florida and there were no front plates. I live in MD now which has front plates. I assumed it was mainly bureaucratic and there’s no real reason other than that’s what they decided to do 80  years ago  

If Texas changed to one plate, I wouldn't celebrate, nor would I be disappointed.  The only time I ever minded having to mount two plates was when I was trying to find a matched pair of year-of-manufacture plates for my '64 Valiant.  

Patientzero said:

Duke said:

Patientzero said:

-Law enforcement driving behind you can't see them

Law enforcement driving toward you or in front of you can see them, and they can't see your rear plate.

Did that really not occur to you, or are you just venting without thinking?

 

Patientzero said:

-Parked in a parking lot or your driveway you can't see them

Depends on whether you back in or not.

 

Patientzero said:

-In many cases adding a front license plate screws up aerodynamics and cooling which in turn hurts fuel economy

That's a manufacturers' design issue.  Take it up with them.

-Over 35mph you cannot read the license plate of a car driving at you while you're driving the other way, I've tried.  Parked maybe.

Police don’t have to read a tag with their eyes.  They have cameras, And scanners. 

Guess you’ve never heard of an ALPR. (Automatic License Plate Reader). They are mounted on most police cars.  That’s what those small boxes mounted diagonally on the roof or trunk are. They are capable of reading and recording thousands of tags per minute. They upload them (including location and time data) to enormous databases. Yes, they can be used to track you. 

This thread is dumb. 

I live in Virginia.  I mounted my C5’s license plate under the front passenger seat.  I’ve been pulled over three times since I’ve owned that car (13 years now).  It has never been an issue.  One officer said “..about your front plate, I think we’ve come to an agreement on that...” no idea what he meant by that but I wasn’t ticketed.

Professor_Brap said:

Living in Ohio, still never have a issue with getting pulled over for not having one. 

Was pulled over once (while tooling along at 80mph) for a warning that I needed to have a front plate.

Was the only time I'd ever been remotely cited for it in that RX-7... any other time, the lack of plate was either ignored, or the conversation went like this: "You have no front plate."  "The car came from out of state and didn't have a bracket."  "Works for me."

Teh S60R doesn't have a front plate either.  Given the nature of the car, I'd prefer to pay a fine than to have to modify the bumper/block the intercooler.  Come to think of it, I've been pulled over once in it already, and the license plate issue wasn't even brought up.

Florida is a "in the rear only" state. 

In reply to mad_machine :

Also like how in europe there were multiple options. Rectangular (similar to US though a bit different)  elongated rectangle and you could also use an adhesive (decal) version on the front

In reply to Patientzero :

The window sticker for my FiST says "front license plate bracket" no charge.

This was on my SE also plus my ZX2SR.

 So at least Ford supplies them.

I took them off and mounted the plate directly to the bumper.   Looks more integrated.

The cops here in Colorado don't really care if you have a front plate or not, unless you're a dick to them.  Then they care.

The meter maids however, they care a lot!  They also happily hand out $75 tickets for not having a front plate, so all my DD's have one.  My 911?  No, it doesn't have one.  When I take that car into areas that I know the meter maids patrol, I make sure I park it in a private parking lot where they can't tag it.

docwyte said:

The cops here in Colorado don't really care if you have a front plate or not, unless you're a dick to them.  Then they care.

The meter maids however, they care a lot!  They also happily hand out $75 tickets for not having a front plate, so all my DD's have one.  My 911?  No, it doesn't have one.  When I take that car into areas that I know the meter maids patrol, I make sure I park it in a private parking lot where they can't tag it.

I’m almost 50.  In my 33 or 34 years of driving I’ve discovered that cops really don’t care about much except when you treat them like a dick.  Even if they’re a dick first, you can often disarm them by being a complete non-dick.  There are a few who can’t be appeased.  Most are just trying to make a living like the rest of us.

God’s Racetrack Clarkson calls it.  But even Italian cops can be a bit dick headed.  I pull off the Autostrada in Calabria (the far south) for some coffee and a pi$s.  I’m immediately pulled over.  “Documenti!” he says.  I give them my passport, work permit, Virginia drivers license, etc.  They take half an hour going through it.  “Tutto posto?” (Everything OK?) I ask.  “In somma.  Vai!”  (more or less. Now GTFO!) he says.

cops are cops.  Doesn’t matter where you are.

Here's the thing I don't understand about license plates - In most places, if you are outside your home, the police are not allowed to approach you, force you to present an ID (what if you have no ID on you), check your personal information and verify if you are a criminal. They need probable cause. When you are driving a car, why are you forced to present a public ID that the police are permitted to use to check your legal status and personal information at will? Is enforcement of the nominal registration fee a good enough reason? Lots of things could aid law enforcement, but we have decided we don't want all of them. I have no interest in front plate laws, invading our privacy is easy enough with a rear plate.

For some reason there has been almost zero debate about automated license plate readers. In China they have weaponize centralized facial recognition systems, etc. in public places. Everyone in Xinjiang province is required to run spyware on their smartphones, they have forcibly taken widespread DNA samples. Officials move in to people's homes to monitor them. 1/6-1/3 of young to middle age males in Xinjiang have spent time in concentration camps recently. I'm not saying it's the same thing, but there's a real danger to automated identify verification systems.

You’re right.  They can’t stop and frisk for the most part if you’re on foot.  In a motor vehicle?  Different story.  It’s how they police.  I used to hate the cops as a young man.  As I got older, with a house and garage full of nice stuff, it’s amazing how that attitude has changed.

John Welsh said:

This year, Ohio Historical Plates have officially gone to just one plate. 

Also in Ohio, you can display a plate that is the model year of the car, as long as you carry the historical plate inside the car.  I think you have to file the vintage plate number with the BMV.  My dad uses 1930 plates on his 1930 Chevy.  

My dad also doesn't use the front plate on his 2004 Cadillac . He's never been harassed, even when the car was in a minor accident and a police report was filed. 

I bought an Indiana car and didn't put the Ohio plate on due to a rusted bolt.  I got a fix-it ticket.  Within the 30 days, I tied the plate on with string.  The cop laughed at my repair, but said the law just required the plate to be affixed to the front of the car.  They tore up the ticket (or whatever they do in that situation).  

These days if you're a criminal, your own car and your driver's license have probably gone by the wayside a long time ago if even had them at all. So using license plates to catch "the bad guys" isn't as effective as it was in the '70s when a rusty El Camino with primer and no exhaust was the sign of a drug dealer.

In reply to GCrites80s :

Who cares about bad guys?  The revenue generated by an ALPR that can read 10,000 tags a day is so huge, there’s no reason to waste time with real bad guys. 

Overdue registrations and back taxes are all they need. 

^Ha, I do remember back in the early Teens (before cop cars had these cameras) that there were people who made a living writing down and taking pictures of license plate numbers. A local former NBA player was recruiting people for the job at conventions and trade shows.

I got stopped once for no front plate.. right after I got the Rover tagged. It came from Pa so did not have a front mount. I ordered one, but it was in the mail when I got pulled over. When I told him I was waiting on the stock mount he asked why I just didn't screw it into the bumper. I had to ask him right back, "would you do that to your car?" He let me off with a warning.