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More Americans are using fake license plates
- djmips 3y agoOn the other hand it feels like there's been a huge money grab with automated systems mailing out tickets or maybe I'm just at sore at the $180 red light camera ticket I just paid.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoRed 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.
- nsxwolf 3y agoThey fill me full of dread and anxiety. Surely that reduces life expectancy?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 3y agoLikely not as much as a risk of an F150 ramming into the side of your car?
- travisporter 3y agoI paid 700 bucks at a red light camera in the middle of an empty intersection at 2pm on a Saturday in Culver City, CA. It came out of nowhere. It felt like an obvious money grab
- loeg 3y agoDid you run the red?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WheatMillington 3y agoDid you run the red just because it was quiet, or do you normally just run reds?
- travisporter 3y agoYeah I normally run red lights. I’m trying to fight the system. It definitely wasn’t because I was taking the GRE the following monday and I wanted to scope the place out. I like the stress of my parents getting a ticket in my life. Also a couple months after, then Culver City stopped the red light traffic camera program
- mock-possum 3y agoThe red light came out of nowhere? How fast were you going?
- TheDudeMan 3y agoDid you run a red light?
- King-Aaron 3y agoI 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.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoYou have zero reason or excuse to be speeding, other than personal selfishness.
- anonymousiam 3y agoWhat about speed limits that were created for the purpose of revenue generation and not safety? One example: https://www.speedtrap.org/california/lone-pine/ https://www.speedtrap.org/california/lone-pine/
- arp242 3y agoComplaining about "going 90mph on a 65mph speed limit" is not a "speed trap"; a speed trap is a situation set up in such a way that many well-intentioned people make an honest mistake. Things like confusing signage, sudden and/or unusual change in the speed limit, and so forth. This is just someone sour because they got caught speeding. For reference 90 mph is 145 km/h, it's pretty fast, and the limit in CA seems to be 70 mph at the most. Driving at 90mph is always wrong unless you are rushing someone to the hospital or similar emergencies.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y agoOne issue has been jurisdictions shortening the length of yellow lights in order to catch people running the red light as a means of revenue generation.
- prawn 3y agoShould that be a federal standard? Is it in most modern countries?
- 3y ago
- mjevans 3y agoTraffic 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.
- loeg 3y agoThere aren't enough cops to go around.
- trgn 3y agoI don't get this line of reasoning. A police officer doesn't need to be present for code enforcement (ie. property inspections etc..). A police officer doesn't need to be present for parking enforcement. A police officer doesn't need to be present for toll fee collection enforcement. Why should police then be present when violating traffic rules? What makes speeding or running a red light so meaningfully special that its enforcement cannot be automated, but violating parking rules can be? > The officer's presence would encourage safer driving at problematic intersections. Cameras would be the exact same type of encouragement, and not be nearly as disruptive or dangerous as a cop pulling someone over. What gives?
- mjevans 3y agoCameras are treated as revenue streams, not safety improvement devices. That's the cover story that's sold to the public, and then it's not unheard of for the light timings to be adjusted to increase revenues rather than promote safety at the intersection. If an office is stated at an intersection it is an important issue. Similar in spirit to warrants as an important step in violating people's privacy.
- trgn 3y ago> Cameras are treated as revenue streams But that's just like your opinion man. > not safety improvement devices. But they are. Speed and red light cameras reduce injury and death. I want myself and my family to live in a city where we won't get randomly murdered or maimed. The carrot isn't working on drivers, it's time for the stick. > Similar to warrants It's not at all. A warrant is invasion of somebody's home because executive power has reason to belief crime is going on. A speed camera invades no-ones privacy, and just registers violations of traffic rules.
- andrewmcwatters 3y agoI’m not an old person, but I know I’m going to sound like a curmudgeon saying this. I think it’s just moral decay. I can’t think of any other meaningful reason. In Phoenix, which I consider the national capitol of bad drivers, in the span of less than 10 years, I’ve noticed a staggering number of people in the metro area who just blatantly run red lights now. Sometimes seconds after they’ve turned. It’s straight up ridiculous, and now I spend time actually checking both sides of the road before driving away from stoplights in an active intersection. I wouldn’t have thought to do that before. People just obeyed the law here. Not consistently mind you: no soul drives the 55 speed limit on I-17, but it’s getting measurably worse. What else do you attribute to that? I guess you could say less traffic enforcement, but I don’t think anything’s changed here in this part of the country. People suck.
- tshaddox 3y ago“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.”
- andrewmcwatters 3y agoYeah, that’s fair. It’s also more likely that people are, of course, doing the same old thing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- atdrummond 3y agoThere’s absolutely a transition occurring from a country that is still mostly high trust to one that is low trust. See: the sizable contingent in SF who believes that open air drug markets and rampant violent crime are simply the price one must pay to live in cities. It doesn’t have to be this way.
- melvyn2 3y ago
- gonesilent 3y agoback in my day you knew a man from his horse...
- fy20 3y agoAs I understand New York state requires car inspections every 12 months. Do they not fail that due to unreadable license plates? Where I am in Europe if you even have a screw in a place that could potentially confuse a camera it will fail the inspection.
- iudqnolq 3y agoThis 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.
- wnevets 3y ago> 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.
- saghm 3y agoIf 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.
- woodruffw 3y agoEnforcement 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.
- 3y ago
- calvinmorrison 3y agoPA. Who has the most expensive turnpike. Closed all tolls. They implemented a shit mail system that doesn't work. Then they suddenly had 350 million in unpaid tolls. Talk about putting a stick in your wheel So the legislature changed the law - don't pay to play on the quasi private road, and your registration will get suspended I see a lot more cars with bike racks on 476 now.
- prawn 3y agoAre you meant to have a smaller registration plate (same registration as your car) on the bike rack? That's how it works in Australia.
- KingMachiavelli 3y agoI've never seen a separate plate for bike racks. Technically in many US states, a bike rack could get you pulled over for having a blocked plate but in practice police don't enforce that. The assumption is the front plant is enough but then not all states require a front plate. The license plate and registration laws in the US are very fragmented. Some states out the registration on the license plate, some on the front or side window, and some are moving to digital only registration. Essentially with almost no work, you can make proving you don't have a validate plate or registration difficult. You can just print a fake temp tag (paper license plate dealerships use) for a state like Texas but drive around in any other state since they have no way of knowing it's a fake temp/dealer plate.
- cafard 3y agoCars registered in Pennsylvania have only a rear license plate.
- heyjonboy 3y agoMany of the subjects of Streetsblog's "criminal mischief" (defaced or obscured plates) are vehicles displaying NYPD parking permits. This problem won't get solved until someone besides the police is tasked with fixing it, at least in NYC.
- woodruffw 3y agoThis 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).
- bigger_inside 3y agoold insight though: some of the best anti-police-advice comes from cops, to their families and kids. They know what the police actually have access to, and what they actually do with it, and they have no patience for that happening to THEM and their families. but of course, they have that convenient citizen/criminal distinction cutout thought process to view the world through, which makes it okay to subject "unknown others" to it, who are "criminals" if they come into the purview of police and thus deserve this.
- scoofy 3y agoI'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.
- karaterobot 3y ago> Which raises some questions: License plates—why do we have them? Are they a mark of a functioning society or a stamp of the police state? This is a good example of the measured, thoughtful tone this article is presenting.
- ornornor 3y agoThat made me laugh, thank you
- xpe 3y agoI was hoping to see some discussion of policy proposals and their pros and cons. Nope. Just another rambling news-style article. I think my experience with ChatGPT has changed what I expect in terms of information consumption. I’ve never liked the traditional journalism format; I’m more drawn to a well organized table of contents. If I want a freewheeling unstructured narrative, I can watch drunk history. Do others feel this way (about wanting better structured information, not inebriated content providers).
- matrixdata 3y agoYou'd probably like Axios where the journalism is presented in bullet points.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- kragen 3y agountil about 20 years ago license plates were a reasonable compromise between privacy and accountability: they didn't have your name on them, and looking you up from the number could only be done by the police, who would only do it when it seemed important, and then only if someone made a note of the plate they couldn't, for example, make a list of everyone who was parked near a protest, and then search a database to see where they were parked over the next two weeks modern computer vision has changed all that, giving rise to massive dragnet surveillance; we should figure out how to get back the privacy we've lost i don't think taping dead leaves to your license plate is going to solve the problem prohibiting police from using computer vision isn't it either; they'll just buy the data from a private vendor like ring
- jjtheblunt 3y agoYou 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.
- Pet_Ant 3y agoSorry, but do the police actually use these powers to arrest thieves and return stolen vehicles? Or is it like when you can point to the house that your stolen iPhone is in and the police say they can't do anything.
- 20after4 3y agoExactly. No they do not use these powers to return stolen cars. Stolen cars only get returned very extremely rarely and only if it's convenient for the police. They don't lift an extra finger to recover stolen property.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoI used to have a neighbor who didn't even know that his car was stolen until he got a call from the police at 6AM. It's not like they towed it back to his house, but at least he was aware of where it was.
- lrvick 3y agoThere have been plenty of times I did not have change for the tolls and was poor enough that the fine would come out of my grocery budget. I would pull over, cover my plate, run the toll, take the next exit, then uncover the plate. Never got caught. YMMV.
- bob1029 3y agoI'm not using fake, but I've got temp tags on my new car that I've not bothered to fix yet. They've been expired for about a year now. Real plates are sitting at the dealership. Urgency level is one of "maybe when I go to get my oil changed". Not sure how exactly I wound up feeling this way about administrative matters, but here we are. Tempting authorities with punitive options over pedantic crap is the extra spice I like in my coffee these days.
- prepend 3y agoMy 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 .
- unstatusthequo 3y agoMaybe 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.
- LinuxBender 3y agoI 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.
- perryizgr8 3y agoYou can wreak far greater havoc on a larger scale with a computer and an internet connection, than with a car. It's time to do away with the draconian and authoritarian practice of requiring to register your vehicle with the state.
- notsound 3y agoSome 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.
- JohnFen 3y agoI've been trying to think of a way to foil ALPR (to evade private tracking, not tolls and the like). I never thought of taping leaves to my plates. I might give that a try.
- dkn775 3y agoI 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.
- piloto_ciego 3y agoWho is that jerk going around and being a nark? MYOB! Last thing we need is people reporting on each other.
- Awelton 3y agoThat 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.