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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

As coming from country with actually working IT, I always wondered about those year and month tags... I get my yearly tax directly as bill to my bank...

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It's to notify police to stop the car if they see it on the road. The US has a lot of infrequently used or unused cars that gradually transition to a sedentary life in a garage or yard. It's not illegal to let your registration or inspection lapse if the car isn't being driven. If you drive a car with a lapsed registration or safety inspection sticker, police will notice, stop you, and issue a ticket.

Nothing prevents DMV and police having interconnected database. Which would allow automatically communicating vehicles removed from use or with lapsed MOT.

The tag is to indicate that the vehicle has paid the appropriate taxes for using the roads. If the tax on the vehicle is not paid then it should not be used on the roads.

Without the tag there is no way to enforce that without the police having to manually enter the plate number for every vehicle they see. Hence the tag: if the police see a vehicle without an up-to-date tag applied it is not legally allowed to use the roads since the owner hasn't paid to keep the roads maintained from the wear incurred by the vehicle while driving on them.

There is an argument to be made that the police could simply use a system that reads license plates up and checks the information automatically, but there are so many 4th amendment abuses/workarounds that the police already use it's hard to imagine much public support for such a system.

While I have no problem with the tag, your claim is false:

> Without the tag there is no way to enforce that without the police having to manually enter the plate number for every vehicle they see.

Police have automatic systems that scan vehicles. I was pulled over once due to an inconsistency in my vehicle registration data (not anything visible on the plate/exterior) because the computer in the police vehicle flagged my car and they decided to follow up on it.

In my case, it was just a quirk of the vehicle owner being unlicensed to drive and there was no violation - but the system correlated the DMV registration details and license status of the owner and flagged the car.

fast accurate plate scanners are relatively new. At most, only on police cars for the past 10 or so years. Many police cars still don't have them, only dedicated highway patrol cars. The sticker system has been in place for over 80 years. Systems that work, that are are generally not difficult to implement stick around past when they're technologically outdated.

In Massachusetts they do, but we still use those stickers as another form of labeling.

That works fine if you live in a tiny country. But in the United States there are tens of thousands of law enforcement agencies authorized to write tickets. Some of them are massive organizations like state highway patrols. Others are towns of 200 people, or even individual schools that don't have the time, money, or infrastructure to integrate with a national system.

Sounds like perfect market for some SaaS. Pull relevant information from everywhere and automate showing failures.

Sure, but do we really want to encourage ubiquitous LPR on every police vehicle? It's already becoming the norm in some cities but that's not exactly an unmitigated good.

They do, the stickers are mostly to make it easier for cops to see expired reg without having to type in every license plate or have a vehicle fitted with LPR. They can also look up the vehicle status in the DMV database, and via an interstate compact.

The US's anti-surveillance laws and sentiment keep ubiquitous camera systems from existing in many places, and keep the ones that do exist, quiet. In my state, Massachusetts, traffic cameras legally cannot be used to issue citations. Automated toll collection, which uses highway mounted plate scanners, faced substantial backlash from people for privacy reasons. And Massachusetts is one of the least anti-government states in the country. If it got out that the police were monitoring which cars were on the road and how often they were driven, there would be literal riots.

> It's not illegal to let your registration or inspection lapse if the car isn't being driven.

True in many states, but California wants vehicles to have valid registration even if the vehicle is not at all operational. The owner gets a break on the cost, but Sacramento still wants their due.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/vehicle-r...

My car's tax is an annual bill, as you describe.

That's not what the tags are for though, the tags are registration tags indicating your plate is active. In Massachusetts, it's $30/yr for active registration and the plate cannot be renewed without active insurance, etc.

So, if you fail to renew your insurance then you won't get a new registration sticker and your plate will eventually be easily identified as lapsed. The automated systems will see it immediately – and they do! But we still apply the sticker for manual identification.

> In Massachusetts, it's $30/yr for active registration

… plus the excise tax. (A variable-rate tax rather loosely based on the value of the vehicle.)

Ontario Canada finally did away with them.

Lots of people decry the loss of government revenue, but I’m happy to see some red tape/bureaucracy cut down for the consumer. I thought governments only did that for big business.

Would have made more sense to just increase gas tax by 0.1 cents/litre.

Tho you’re still supposed to register for free online every year or two, which I’m sure 90% of the population is going to forget to do.

>decry the loss of government revenue

you got rid of the registration stickers and the fees?

in alberta they got rid of the stickers, but kept the annual fees. and the private contractors who collect those fees.

> you got rid of the registration stickers and the fees?

Correct.

(Though I always wondered why they just didn’t make the insurance companies send the stickers, or eu style where you put your insurance slip in a little window packet)

increase gas tax? from the government that spent a bunch of money printing stickers decrying gas taxes, forcing private businesses to use them, and then defending the practice in court before having it struck down as unconstitutional?

They really are many law firms’ best friend.

In lots of states, the annual fee is based on the age and value of the vehicle, making it a somewhat progressive tax.

As coming from country with actually working IT

Which one is that?

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