license plate covers

In most states, you can get a ticket for using one of those covers, I know in NY, if you cover or block any part of your plate (yes those plate frams could be illegal!) you can get a ticket..

Seems to me that if my vehicle were stolen, then I would love to have the tag scanned by a local camera. If the tag is unreadable, then you've helped the thief out!

Don't break the law and you have nothing to worry about.

it doesn't seem like the cops stop anybody for license plate covers that are so dark you can't read the plate in bright sunlight, or age old card board temporary license plates. Maybe the cops know that these are the liberals that collect checks from voting and keeping the liberal socialists in office.

I noticed on the FL turnpike that they bill for tolls based on photos taken along the way. It will be interesting to see if this arrives in PA for us to pay. I think most of the plate covers are designed to blind a camera that uses a flash. Not all, or most of them do in daylight.

I too will be interested in knowing how well these covers actually work, and hope that people who have tried them will give testimony. Did they work, or fail?

Will the same system arrive in PA for you to pay? Or will the bill from your trip to FL arrive in PA for you to pay?

The answer to the second question is YES you will get an invoice for the tolls you passed plus I believe $2.50 for generating the invoice.

If you ignore the bill FL will notify PA and you will be prevented from renewing the tag on the vehicle in question until the FL bill is paid.

I have seen so many different plate covers that it seems clear the police are doing nothing to enforce the law. No cover is legal in New York, even those plastic frames from the dealer that only cover the edge.

Like Jery says, the ultimate cover appears to be black plastic and the plate cannot be read from 10 feet away in strong sunlight. I am sure the red light cameras or plate readers cannot read the plate through this cover. You may as well put cardboard over over the plate or spray paint it black.

There are so many law-abiding citizens driving around with plate covers that the criminals are getting a free pass for the getaway because they fit right in.

dobs108

Enforcement may depend on where you are too. The main source of revenue for Elk Grove Village seems to be traffic tickets, so I bet you'd be far more likely to get one there. S***cago has far more serious things to worry about, like people speeding through school zones at 10 PM, hence the cameras.

Many different things have been try ,to avoid getting a speeding ticket,or beat a Red light camera,none seems to work.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode73

Covering your license plate making the tag unreadable is a quick way to get pulled over by the cops and possibly getting a ticket. If you are doing nothing illegal, then you should have no problem having your tag viewed.

Motor Scooter Cops can spot them and love to pull you over here in Arizona. The best one is the electronic cover, like the window shade, clear until activated, turns cover black at flick of switch. When they get cheaper they will be out there.

This whole thread is about people trying to not get caught breaking the law. The fine would still be there if a human stopped you but it would cost the taxpayer more. This would mean that there would be an increase of officers to cover all violations of the laws.
Basically this means "Break the law, pay the fine". It does not matter how you got caught.

The Good...The Covers do exist!
not sure where you can get your hands on them thou.
The Bad... when the cover are installed you can see through them easily with the naked eye the trouble is that if the person has any type of sunglasses on they cant read your plate either! so that police office that rolls up behind you on sunny day with his glasses on will easily spot your vehicle with the plate blocking covers!

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-da...

MythBusters did a show on it and all the various products designed to cover your plate - answer - none of them worked.

clear covers that are easily readible from straight on such as right behind or directly in front of you.
If you view at an angle though it distorts the plate. Since most RLC are at an angle these would be an option. I've seen them around and are probably on ebay or amazon.

there was/is a company developing a frame for the plate that contained strobe lights. The thought is these strobes would detect the flash from the camera and then flash themselves causing the image to be over exposed. That might work for visible light but what do you do when the camera also records infrared from the "invisible" infrared flash that some companies have incorporated into their units?

they block cams from being able to read the plate, a human can't even read the plate when directly behind the vehicle.

Again, it's a game. People that use them are betting that a) they won't pass a cop b) even if they do pass a cop, the cop won't do anything

Let's face it, life is full of cheaters. We don't seem to go after them unless the stakes are high.

Take this impending 6-10" snow storm today. Costco's lines on Sat. were 4X the size they normally are on weekends. I watched people attempt to cut the line on multiple occasions, and I would have to say at least 50% of the time, they got away with it.

Cheating is cheating. They are on camera. But there are no consequences to cutting in line. Just as there are no consequences to running red lights, when there is no RLC.

Covering plates in OH is illegal. But most places don't enforce it unless they need a reason to stop you...which normally they may not have one if you're following the law. But remember, they don't ever profile anyone...unless your tags are covered.

got a ticket in MD for using these coves. Some states make them illegal by law.

Oh man do I get fired up when I hear "If you are not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have a problem with xxx".

I"m not doing anything wrong at home watching tv, but I sure don't want the police coming in to verify that.
There's that "unreasonable" search thing.
Sure, a licence plate is in public view and is available for police to check. But many citizens are coming to the position that automated checkpoints are right on the edge of unreasonableness.

Good link to the Mythbusters episode ... thanks!

+1 ! The thing that people don't realize is that with automated data collection, the slope from free state to police state is VERY steep and VERY slippery.

...in the mail. A couple of years ago I rented a van in Cincinnati for a trip to Florida. A couple of months later, a charge showed up on my AMEX card for the toll that I had incurred while driving in Florida. They had sent it to Hertz and it had been billed to my card.

The car dealers that would put plate frames on the cars they sell had to modify them to show All the information on the plate.

In Florida on the Suncoast Pkwy and the Veterans pkwy a lot of the exits have no attendants and you can only pay with a sun pass or exact change. If you don't either one, they will take a picture of your plate and send you a bill.

As a retired cop, plate covers are never a priority, but if I see Joe Gang Banger driving down the street with one, it gives me probable cause to pull him over, and once I do, you never know what it will lead to.

Just like the idiots who, instead of layering their registration tags, decide it would be pretty to run the stickers up the side of the plate. You are just giving me a reason to pull you over, see and smell what is available to the senses, and based on that, potentially take you to jail.

Of course, if I pull someone over for a moving violation and they have a plate cover, that will be on the citation too.

They're illegal here in Wisconsin.

sorry again for the mulitple responses.

They're illegal here in Wisconsin.

They're illegal here in Wisconsin.

I don't know if the covers work or not but a couple things to consider are if you are carjacked and your car is stolen, it may make it harder to track and also if you travel through different areas/cities/states, the farther you are from your home, the more likely you may be stopped by police because it's easier to generate revenue from non-residents than residents.

Luckily, so is photo enforcement....

I've read some municipalities charge a fee for contesting a camera ticket. Sometimes the fee is charged even if the ticket is tossed.

An officer won't give me a ticket if I enter an intersection on a red light to allow access by an emergency vehicle. Good luck going to court to fight a RLC ticket under those circumstances.

An officer will at least pretend to listen if I say I was afraid of getting hit from behind from a speeding car. Might even not give me a ticket if it's obvious I was avoiding an accident.

An officer isn't going to be giving out tickets for not stopping a full 3 seconds. Posters have claimed being ticketed. Posters haven't been able to find a law which requires anything other then a full stop.

Officers don't generally shorten the amber time in order generate extra revenue.

How many drivers come to a full stop if you can't see any cars, and you have good visibility? Yes you're still breaking the law but the ticket isn't safety motivated.

The mythbuster link was useful. Looks like the covers don't work.

In Ohio there are some judges that have claimed that even clear license plates are not legal and have upheld fines for them. That being said, in Suburbia, OH; no cop is going to pull you over for having a clear license plate cover. But if you are in The Hood, OH; then they might just to see what else they may have caught on their line.

Our cop cars got license plate scanners a few years ago and there were some people who were very upset at it. One man was particularly vocal and used some choice words during the town hall meeting. One of our cops looked him up afterward and found that he had a car stolen about a decade ago that was never found. Maybe he was just jealous?

But the license plate scanners are pretty cool. When we were bored at the Firehouse one day, the cops were showing us how they worked and it's a very effective system. The database on the MDT (Mobile Data Terminal, a fancy term for the laptop mounted above the console) gets updated each night sometime between 1 am and 4 am (usually almost always within a few minutes of 2 am). This is pushed out to all of the cruisers. If an Amber Alert is issued, the cop can manually update the computer and any manual changes will stay on that computer for 24 hours (the thinking being that after 24 hours they would have gotten another data push with the information in it). For Amber Alerts, our cops are required to stop whatever they are doing to enter in the data unless they are on an active emergency run. So if he's writing you at ticket, you'll be waiting an extra 5 minutes. All others "radio pushes" for things like felonies are to be entered as soon as feasible. Stolen cars are not generally updated until the next computer push.

As he drives down the road, if he gets a ping, the computer will sound an alert and a new screen pops up with the license plate that was found, a picture of the rear (or front) of the vehicle, and what the expected color, make, and model is. It is the bane of many cops' existence to get one of those in rush hour traffic since it is very hard to find, especially if the real-time photo was of low resolution and they are only going off of the database information on what color, make, and model the car is.

It's too bad the covers don't work. It sounds like a great idea.

And if you're not hiding anything, why do you have a problem with a police search .....

I don't have a problem with searches when they are valid ... meaning when the person who wants to search has probable cause as it is defined by the courts. But ... there's this inconvenient thing called privacy which, when it comes to unreasonable searches, is actually guaranteed by the Constitution of the country in which I live. The sad fact is that many police departments have been trained by the DEA (and probably others) to use coercive language to get "consent" to search cars and people when they have no probable cause at all ... when they are just fishing. It is hard for a kid to say "no" when a cop walks up with his hand practically resting on his pistol and says "I need you to open your trunk, will you do that for me?" ... I don't have anything to hide, but I feel the moral duty to train the LEO's that I encounter that "No, officer, I'd rather not ..." is a valid response to that question and it doesn't mean I'm guilty of a damned thing. Maybe I'm a cross-dresser, or maybe I'm a Republican in California or an Obama supporter in South Carolina, or maybe I'm fighting to dissolve public employee pensions in this cop's state, or maybe I'm a Red Sox fan in NYC ... regardless, what is in my trunk is NONE OF HIS BUSINESS, unless he has probable cause or a search warrant. If we all roll over on this issue, our right to that privacy will be just another curiosity for our kids to read about in a history book. THAT is why I have a problem with unsubstantiated searches.

CC

As I read it, the Constitution does not "guarantee" a "right to privacy". The courts have used the "concept" of privacy to decide any number of cases, but you are trying to relate "privacy" to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution which says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

You correctly have pointed out that the words "unreasonable" and "probable cause" are key.

I like your statement

I would point out that - just because it is "you" - does not mean that there is not "probable cause".

What I always wonder is why people rail against police officers when it comes to situations like this thread - license plate covers/readers -(where the assumption seems to be that the officer will take advantage of the situation to "search") BUT THEN (in other threads) invoke their "right" (??) to be caught and ticketed by a police officer when they have run a red light or are excessively speeding (where the assumptions is that the police officer will let them off with a warning). Which is it?

Why not refuse to buy at any retail outlet that has a surveillance camera in the lot or in the store or both? Why use the internet where your "interests" are captured and used to "push" ads on you? Why not pay cash for everything so that all of your purchases are not captured whenever and wherever made? Why use a smartphone that can track what cell towers you pass and perhaps prove that you were really in some locations you claim that you never, ever, went there?

We need to recognize that we have - in this age of technology - very little "privacy". And, if we want to rail against things like license plate readers, we also need to bemoan the fact that technology (not the "government" or "law officials") is the driving force.

government is a big driver in new tecnology being developed. Our tax dollars pay for alot of new products that are developed and then transformed into civilian use.

My friend and I were driving in separate cars in Centre Island NY when we passed a stationary plate reader at a police station. They dispatched a patrol car to chase and pull my friend over.

The officer did not explain what the problem was and he ordered her to drive back to the police station and come inside. I followed and found her in tears inside the station.

The officer explained that the plate reader showed a "hit" that she had no insurance. She provided a bonafide proof of insurance card. The officer did not believe it was valid, and he would not let her go. She was so intimidated that she couldn't properly speak to defend herself.

I discussed the problem with both of them and found that she had changed insurance companies 6 months previously. Every time this happens, the old insurance company automatically makes a report of a lapse of insurance to the national database that the plate readers use. The start of the new insurance policy had somehow been missed by the database. (Garbage In = Garbage Out!!!!)

She was going to be arrested since she could not be permitted to drive away with no insurance. I argued with the officer (at my peril) that she was a reliable law-abiding citizen and that if she was arrested, he would really look bad in court when she provided the judge with the proof of insurance. He could have been sued for false arrest. He finally admitted that the database could have been wrong and permitted us to leave without an arrest or summons. We were detained 40 minutes and we were very lucky to be free.

Other police departments in this area also have plate readers on patrol cars and none of them ever showed a hit on her plate. Needless to say, we have not returned to Centre Island.

dobs108

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/...

http://centreisland.org/depts/police-dept/

https://www.google.com/maps/search/police+station+near+Centr...

Back when you and I were young, that was very true. DARPA and the like were doing basic research and NASA had the love of the citizenry. Lots of things were developed that translated into civilian usage.

I do not think that we can now say that government is a "big driver" now. I wish that it were.

My post of "And if you're not hiding anything, why do you have a problem with a police search ....." was meant as sarcasm.

I am against all unresonable searches as well as most all automated data collection.

I'm sure I will be dead before our society and country collapses in totality, but I weep for our children and grandchildren.

How do you feel about Public Records and the Freedom of Information Act?

... this is true in most states.

I am okay with Public Records and the FOI Act. That, to me, is part of living in a society.

Unreasonable searches and plate recognition and the likedo not fall into those catagories, IMO.

Perhaps my hypocrisy knows no bounds.

I am not understanding how plate recognition equates to unreasonable searches.

In my municipality we have highway cameras that one can view through the internet to check on traffic conditions before leaving for work. They are monitored to dispatch a highway incident truck to help stranded vehicles get back on the road again and ease the traffic congestion stranded vehicles cause.

If these cameras had more resolution they could read plates and even identify occupants. I suppose they could be used for Amber Alerts, too. What would you do with them?

What exactly is wrong with plate recognition? It can locate stolen vehicles. It can be used to catch people with outstanding arrest warrants.

First point -
State DOT cameras that monitor traffic flow (and that's all they do) are low resolution for a reason. The intent is to see how the traffic flows not to gather evidence. You don't need a lot of resolution to see if a vehicle is stopped or there is an accident. You are interested in looking at the situation not the components of the incident. The other point of consideration is the quality of the video has a lot to do with the bandwidth required for transmitting an image. Low resolution, low bandwidth requirements. Bandwidth and resolution come at an exponential not incremental price.

On the second point, the concern isn't over the fact you and your vehicle are in a public place an what the camera captures is what woul be seen by the average person in the same place at the same time. The concern is the fact the image is retained and can be used as evidence because of its resolution. It's a lot different from seeing a green car that may be a Ford or GM to seeing it is a 2009 green Impala with license plate # whatever at this location at this time.

The argument is wrongly couched as a "right to privacy" argument as it truly is a discussion over retention of an image with the collected attributes the LPR provides.

More Data Points / metadata for the NSA.

It's all for our protection though?

Plate recognition does not equate to unreasonable searches. It comes under automated data collection to which I am opposed.

Too much retention of images. Box Car has a good post. Yes, it 'could' be used to catch people with outstanding warrants, but that should happen after a cop calls in the plate due to a probable cause incident, IMHO.

I'm sure we will disagree on this and that is okay.