All proceeds from their sale go directly to the Fund To Exonerate Officers Involved in Shootings.
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I wonder what psychological effect that may have had. I’ve long believed that many aspects of car culture induces some form of sociopathy. Now add in the effect of people behaving better when there’s a face within their line of sight. Would it induce that observer effect, and/or would it strengthen the perceived connection between the vehicle and their identity, which I see as one of the “root effects” of that induced sociopathy?
Here in Michigan, the plate is tied to the car’s current owner. When a car is sold, the orig owner takes off the plate & may affix it to another vehicle. Cops still demand our license, registration, and proof of insurance. Ridiculous. I much prefer the method used crost The Pond mentioned above.
Edited yet again to add: We prolly don’t do it that way in the states b/c no one can figure out how to run such massive databases (individual states + a national one for the out of state plates) on a Commodore 64. I jest, but many state and federal gov’t depts use eye-poppingly outdated systems. The time came when support for windoze 98 was ending, and inter- and national news all ran stories re: Yankistani gov’t depts’ using outmoded and improperly patched and un-updated OSes. We sup cynicism ‘n’ sarcasm in our mothers’ milk round these parts, so I was surprised they weren’t running windoze ME.
When I lived in suthon Coloforniyah, my BF and I discussed license plates one day. I told him how it works in MI, and he was rather surprised. He explained it’s the opposite in CA - the plate is tied to the car, and stays on it when it changes hands.
They have quotas. They deny it every time it comes up in public/media discourse, but as always, they lie. They run plates as part of trying to fill them.
Some cop shops even have several diff quotas. My oldest friend was walking to a fairly distant bus stop from a friend’s place. She was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers, and no make up, and was arrested b/c “suspected of being a prostitute.” At the pig pen she overheard her arrestors and their boss, who was furious when they admitted they’d seen no one try picking her up nor even slow down and check her out. “WTF?! Does she have AIDS tattooed on her forehead?! What is wrong with you two?!” “Well, we needed another white girl,” was the offered defense. My friend was naturally horrified by that.
She wound up spending several days in court. Thank fuck she was working for a lawyer at the time! What she’d overheard at the cop shop helped secure the innocent verdict.
The tale you told is also horrifying. Your fellow Happy Mutants are all glad it turned out the way it did!
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Disarm the cops and the politics of the 2nd amendment changes drastically.
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I’ve been pulled over in a car without a glovebox and no registration papers. The grumpy policeman was able to radio back to dispatch to confirm registration status. They can do the same with insurance. Hell they don’t even need your ID - they can get all your info in their car’s computer.
The only time I can think of it being truly problematic is if someone’s out of state from a non-neighboring state but I’d imagine there’s workarounds here to prevent easy forging of documents.
There’s basically little reason other than laziness.
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Some patrol cars have license plate cameras mounted sideways, I have seen them driving through motel parking lots and once down my street.
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How about they stop asking for registration? Asking for it is an anachronism from the past. The registrations are computerized and they can get that information on the mobile data terminal in their cop car.
(I can imagine that there are some instances, such as missing license plates, where asking for a printed registration might make sense, but in most cases it seems redundant.)
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Also, we shouldn’t be required to keep a document with our name and home address in our car. That just makes it easier for car thieves to find the right house and use the garage door opener (if you have one) to burgle the garage and house.
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That’s an excellent point.
I’ve been pulled through the system for having current registration but last year’s paper in the glove box. Which wasted everybody’s time and resources in ways that were precisely known in advance. As in, the cop even reassured me that when I showed up in court with the piece of paper they had mailed me a few months ago, the judge would bang their gavel and send me on my merry way with no fines or anything.
Which is separate from the time I had my license revoked three times for using a turn signal prior to changing lanes. But that was in a town that is just an exception to everything, so any anecdote from that place is of no value beyond measurement of who’s experienced the dumbest absurdities in life. I’m not even sure π has more than ten digits in that particular hellsville.
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The same goes for insurance. In California they have an electronic record of whether you are currently insured, which is harder to fake than a printed piece of paper. Yet even though they know whether you are currently registered and insured, they will still cite you for driving without current registration or insurance if you don’t have the current papers with you. It’s ridiculous.
And if people don’t follow up on such bogus citations they can lose their drivers license and subsequently wind up paying 5x the normal rates for insurance if and when they manage to get it back. Administrative fines and punishments disproportionately affect the poor, and can make getting and keeping a job (no DL or car, no job, in many instances) much harder.
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I’m pretty sure that in many, if not all, states in the US you can get a ticket for failing to have proof of insurance. It’s one of those things where they give you the ticket and then you go to court with the your proof of insurance and they “wipe out the ticket” but then charge you $45 in court fees anyway and the policeman earned his salary. It’s one of those circumstances where the cop can give you a ticket and justify it even though the only reason they pulled you over was that you happened to be driving at 3 am from a late night studying session and they figured you might be drunk.
Does having photos of the registration and insurance on your phone count as proof of these things?
(Not that I think everyone should be handing their phones over to any cop that pulls them over.)
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This all has to be a control thing. Registration paperwork, insurance paperwork. It’s an excuse for the cops/court to have control over you. Years ago here in Calif, we stopped having to mail in a proof-of-insurance card with the car registration because I’m sure the insurance companies got some kind of advantage out of it. Why do we need to provide it when being stopped by the cops?
IIRC, you can provide a ‘facsimile’. But I’m with you, I’d never hand my unlocked phone to a cop to review. I have a hard enough time doing that with the TSA guy at the airport when providing my electronic boarding pass.
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I remember my dad’s insurance company (back when you bought your car insurance from a local company with a physical office) giving him a pouch with their logo, address and phone number that clipped to the sun visor.
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And in fact you don’t even have to carry ID with you when driving. If you’re stopped and you’re not carrying your driving licence or proof of insurance, you have a week to bring them to a police station.
Not requiring ID makes sense, given that there are still several million people driving around in the UK with a licence that looks like this:
who can’t reasonably be expected to carry it around with them.
(They haven’t issued these in a couple of decades, but if you still have one you can keep using it until you move house or turn 70.)
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Yep. But only if you haven’t been issued a photocard version, which you will have if, as you say, you notified them of any change of address, or were given any penalty points. And only until you turn 70 years old. Although I have a photocard version (which means my paper version is no longer a driving licence, but a ‘counterpart’ and these were abolished about 6 years ago) I still can’t bring myself to destroy mine, even though the DVLA says you can/should.
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They don’t or didn’t require you to renew your license every X number of years?
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If I were ever stopped by cops and needed to show my registration, I would communicate with them as if they were NASA mission control and I was space-walking outside the ISS: I will now raise my right arm in order to reach the glove compartment in five – read fiver – seconds. Do you copy that? I have now reached the glove compartment and will now open it very, very slowly…
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Driving licence photos must be renewed every 10 years at least. But if you have not been issued a photocard version and just have a paper version, it is valid until you are 70.
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That would result in fewer new recruits. Hm.
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In general, if they pull you over for traffic, they make you just sit there for a minute or two before they exit the car and come up to your window. This is the time when you should get out your license, registration and insurance and then hold them in your hand with your hands visible on the steering wheel when they walk up. Otherwise, you are right. Always say, “My insurance stuff is in the glove compartment so I’m going to reach over there and get it.” Treat cops like they are rattle snakes. No sudden movements.
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