Have you noticed an increase in the amount of drivers using obscured license plates on their cars? We sure have. More and more people are trying to skirt the law — and avoid photo radar cameras — by making it hard to read their plates or removing them completely.
For obvious reasons, these are illegal. Oregon Revised Statute states clearly that, “A person commits the offense of illegal alteration or illegal display of a registration plate if… the plate has been altered, modified, covered or obscured in any manner… so as to render them unreadable.”
Speed and traffic signal photo radar cameras must be able to read a license plate to issue a citation. But getting caught obscuring your license plate is a Class B traffic violation in Oregon, and it will typically run you a lot less than a speeding ticket – that is, if you face any punishment at all.
It’s easy to find online tutorials for DIY tinted license plate screens (I won’t aid and abet this practice by linking to any of them, but they’re out there), and without more consequences, people aren’t going to suddenly stop doing this — especially as the City of Portland installs more speed and red light cameras.
“I don’t see any reason why this would be something that would need to be done by armed police officers. I think the parking enforcement officers solution is appealing.”
Obstructed license plates do more than help people evade the authorities. If a car driver is involved in a hit-and-run, road rage incident, or other type of dangerous and/or illegal interaction with another road user, it’s nearly impossible to recall their license plate information if it’s obstructed.
Chris Thomas, an attorney at Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost (a BikePortland advertiser) who specializes in traffic law, shared photos on Twitter (at right) of obscured plates he’s come across recently and several people replied with even more examples.
In some ways, similar to untraceable ghost guns, these are ghost cars — practically invisible to law enforcement.
So, what can we do?
Putting more cops on the road might feel like the right response, but that’s complicated and fraught. Even if the Portland Police Bureau prioritized these type of infractions (which they don’t), traffic stops by armed individuals with militaristic training can result in serious trauma and harm, especially for people of color and other marginalized groups.
Some advocates think it would make more sense if Portland Bureau of Transportation parking enforcement officers handled this.
“I don’t see any reason why this would be something that would need to be done by armed police officers,” Chris Thomas told me. “It seems like a pretty binary thing. They’ve either got plates that are unobscured or they don’t. That’s why I think the parking enforcement officers solution is appealing, because these are people who are going around looking at cars parked in the street already.”
Thomas also pointed out that while citing obscured plates is currently outside the authority of parking enforcement as per City Code, unarmed parking enforcement officers can already issue citations for expired tags and missing plates. It reasons their jurisdiction could be expanded to include this.
Amending this code would make it possible to issue fines to people who obscure their plates under the parking enforcement umbrella, it would prevent direct police interactions, and would increase the effectiveness of our photo radar cameras. Portland Bureau of Transportation Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is a big proponent on using non-police tactics to address transportation issues. She used traffic calming to reduce gun violence and dangerous driving in the Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhood earlier this year and successfully passed a bill in the recent legislative session to remove police oversight from the traffic camera citation process.
What do you think? Have you noticed more covered license plates recently, and do you have any other ideas about how to combat this problem? If you know someone who has their plates hidden, I’d be curious to know their rationale for doing so. And you should probably tell them why it’s such a bad idea.
Taylor has been BikePortland’s staff writer since November 2021. She has also written for Street Roots and Eugene Weekly. Contact her at taylorgriggswriter@gmail.com
“I don’t see any reason why this would be something that would need to be done by armed police officers,” Chris Thomas told me. “It seems like a pretty binary thing. They’ve either got plates that are unobscured or they don’t. That’s why I think the parking enforcement officers solution is appealing, because these are people who are going around looking at cars parked in the street already.”
Is Chris Thomas volunteering to take the job where you, as an unarmed representative of the “gubment” has to pull over an F350 driver with a Sovereign Citizen bumper sticker and tell them they need to remove their illegal license plate cover?
“We should have teachers carry guns since a crazy might shoot up a school” “Convenience stores should be armed in case they get robbed at gunpoint”
Your thinking is flawed and absurd to expect anyone to be safe in society is to be armed. Having a gun only escalates a situation.
Both of your examples are different situations, and I disagree with both as examples where a gun would be required. If a convenience store owner wants to be armed, that would be their prerogative, of course.
If we are just going to place tickets on these vehicles while they are parked in the city, that can be done by an unarmed parking services (but it sounds like our city rules need to change first).
Traffic stops are a completely different situation, and carry significant risks for the government worker: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/us/traffic-stops-officers-attacked/index.html The historic violence against police during traffic stops is one of the main reasons they are so potentially violent for victims of police today. Police are trained to treat these as potentially deadly encounters, because they can be. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544.766&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Again, it’s easy to sit back and say that we should have unarmed government workers pulling over motorists for traffic or vehicle violations, but a lot harder to actually hire and retain people who would be willing to do that. Portland Street Response won’t get involved on calls where a weapon is seen. There are decent odds that a vehicle being pulled over has a weapon in it (5-10% on average), so why would we treat that any differently?
They shoot the police because the police have guns. 90% of the time anyone shoots someone it’s because the person they are shooting has a gun that the shooter is concerned about.
Portland parking enforcement officers, who are unarmed, are already authorized to issue citations for expired tags, missing plates, and so on. They are authorized to do so under the City code, and do so by inspecting parked vehicles, not by pulling people over. My suggestion is simply to expand their authority slightly to also authorize them to issue citations for obscured plates, which would be a relatively straightforward amendment.
It seems like fines for obstructed plates are really low in other states ($50-100). I didn’t see a fine listed here – https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_803.550.
Honestly, it seems like it should be much higher than this – shouldn’t it be at least the cost of a speeding ticket or what’s the actual incentive to take it off?
All vehicles fines should scale to income, and for things like this the automobile should be impounded.
Agreed – Norway does a great job at things like this. Was going to suggest impounding, as well, but changed my mind.
As a Class B traffic violation, it looks like the default fine is $265: https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_153.019
The violation class for speeding varies, so the fine could be more or less: https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_811.109
These cars are terrifying. They remove what is often our only evidence linking a person to terrible crimes. Given the large numbers of “proud boys” and allies behind this, we should use whatever “armed individuals with militaristic training” we have enforcing other traffic laws. I’m not sure what a parking enforcement officer is going to do when the plates are gone entirely (which I’d seen less than a handful of times my whole life and now see regularly). Write a ticket for a parked car with no plates and VIN obscured or not readable? Tuck it under a wiper and hope for the best?
Didn’t Jo Ann on city council tell police to not pull people over for license plate infractions on motorcycles and SUVs and cars? There are so many expired license plate tags around the Portland area this year.
No offense to Taylor, but, in all honesty, I don’t get why BP even bothers publishing these sort of articles when the party line you all have to toe is that law enforcement shouldn’t ever actually enforce the law.
Do you realize the irony/ridiculousness of your writing “the party line you all have to toe is that law enforcement shouldn’t ever actually enforce the law” in response to an article about how best to enforce a law, which includes suggestions for how to enforce it?
I note that some of the images above are for plates from outside Oregon, so clearly other places aren’t enforcing the law either.
My own community of Greensboro NC requires license plates on all bicycles, by city statute. It’s clearly neither enforceable nor is the local police department willing to enforce it, nor do I know of any bicyclists willing to put a registration sticker let alone the required plate on their bicycle. Other communities have similar ordinances – my hometown of Grand Forks ND even successfully enforced such a law into the 1980s, until the labor and administrative costs outweighed all other benefits of having the program.
So I find it a wee bit ironic that I’m viewing such a story about obscured plates on cars and trucks, written by bicyclists who I’m guessing are not too eager themselves to have such plates put on their bikes, am I right? And why haven’t you inquired why both your local police and those from outside the area aren’t enforcing “the law”? Might it be because of the same reasons you aren’t using bike tags your self? Totally unenforceable? High administrative costs? Little positive benefit for the community? Makes your bike look ugly? Yeah, sure, the drivers of those trucks and cars could be involved in crashes, but so could you on your eBike, scratching and denting other vehicles, and yet you are somehow exempt from having a plate?
If people want to drive a car, get it registered, have insurance, and display the license plate. If not, ticket people into compliance or impound the vehicle.
Things are really breaking down if we can’t follow simple rules.
You don’t draw a distinction between the power and mass that a car has vs a cyclist?
The point here is that this is enforceable and the consequences and costs justify enforcement. You seriously think there is little positive benefit to the community for enforcing this for cars? You think scratching and denting vehicles is even close to the same as causing over 40k deaths a year alone in the US? Is this post a spoof? What’s your argument – that we shouldn’t be enforcing obstructed plates on cars?
Also, TIL that Grand Forks did something sensible once by stopping the enforcement of that law.
As someone working to implement tolling in this region, I am definitely concerned about the impacts on the toll system from people covering up their plates. Tolling will provide even more incentive to do this.
This only makes sense if the parking enforcement people are going to boot, immobilize, and ultimately tow and impound these vehicles when they encounter them. There is no regular parking enforcement patrol that is out driving around and enforcing laws on moving vehicles. The parking enforcement vehicles that PBOT currently has are not equipped to pull over vehicles that traveling on the street.
If they go with the immobilization/impound route, the cost of recovering a vehicle should exceed the cost of a speeding violation.
When I lived in Chicago, parking enforcement was not to be messed with. They’d go from ticket to boot in a heartbeat
Putting more cops on the road might feel like the right response
It is the right response. As you say, the issue is pretty binary, so avoiding a stop is trivial.
Enforcing license plate issues only against those who park downtown seems like pretty weak sauce.
I do not value the right of people to drive without a license plate more than I do the public safety benefit of having cars be identifiable.
Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, serial killer Ted Bundy, Randy Kraft, the California strangler, William Suff, serial killer, and Joel Rifkin, another serial killer, were all apprehended in traffic stops. I’m sure they all would have meekly accepted a ride to jail from an unarmed parking and traffic enforcement officer.
About half the Teslas in Portland and a substantial portion of other expensive cars (Corvettes and Porsches among them) seem to be driving around with no front license plate. I guess it spoils the aesthetics or the aerodynamics. Or maybe it’s just because the law only applies to stupid, little people.
The law doesn’t apply to anyone, at the moment.
Since you have your finger on the pulse of license plate infractions, which percentage of Nissan Altimas have no license plates at all and why is it 100%?
And of course we can’t expect the houseless folks driving their unsafe, unregistered, and uninsured vehicles to be compliant with this either.
Do you need to have legal plates when driving a motor vehicle on a multi-use trail? Asking for some friends.
Speaking of obscure parts of cars, how about the extreme obscure tinted windows in many vehicles these days? Oregon law limits the degree of tint that can be used, but it seems that this is regularly ignored. Blacked out windows in a vehicle prevent vulnerable road users approaching an intersection from seeing whether a cross street driver is paying attention and makes proceeding into the intersection very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. I suggest that all DEQ/DMV inspections include checking to insure that window tint does not exceed the maximum allowed.
What we need are regular safety inspections.
Agree on the window tint. It would be nice if inspections checked for functioning brakes, lights, turn signals, horn, bumper, wheel tread, and actually measured emissions at the tail pipe instead of just plugging into the OBD2 port. It would also be nice if heavy trucks and old cars were subject to emissions testing.
Taylor, thanks for doing this article on an important traffic safety and personal accountability issue. And per the idea of having Portland parking do enforcement is a good one BUT leaves 80% of the state unenforced…assuming you travel on state highways and park in private lots. Just as private parking facilities have posted rules, they should add this one too…since they cannot enforce or manage these “ghost vehicles”.
PSU TREC students…hey this might be a great public survey question to pivot on, as I strongly assume those always saying “bicyclists should pay taxes / have licenses” are more likely to be operating “ghost vehicles”…it could be a good “check question” to probe why and what they believe in …
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