My car’s tags expire at the end of the month, so I have to pay the State of Texas $70 and change for new ones. Seems simple, right? Texas is so advanced, that you can use the intertubes to buy a new sticker. And that’s exactly what I did. No problems so far.
Here’s the problem. I’m currently in Abu Dhabi. My car is in a parking lot in Houston. The tax sticker is hopefully in my house in Austin.
So my question is: what happens if a nice friendly policeman stops me on my drive home?
You explain the situation. If they cannot pull it up as being true, then they may write you a ticket. In that case, I cannot say what Texas law is on the subject; it should be the case that you would be able to get the ticket dismissed upon proof of valid registration at the time of the stop.
Most likely if you can show him the airplane tickets/luggage/your jet lagged body, and he can verify the new tags via radio nothing.
You might get a fix it ticket, but unless you fail the attitude test I doubt it.
If it’s anything like CA, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to make the drive without a cop noticing anyway, provided you don’t attract their attention in some other way.
Your registration should show up as valid on the cop’s computer, even if your sticker is out of date. As others have said, rationally explain the situation, and once you get home, slap that puppy on the plate.
In Virginia I’ve let my tags lapse a few times and been pulled over. Both times it happened I was basically told by the police officer that if I brought a valid registration to the court clerk the ticket would be dismissed. Both times this is exactly what happened (even though both times the date I renewed my tags was AFTER the date of the stop–meaning they knew I was driving on genuinely expired tags.)
Insurance is a different matter, I’ve heard in some states if you don’t have proof of insurance on you, it’s an auto-tow and the officer has little discretion in the matter. In Virginia I’ve failed to have proof of insurance but I did have active insurance on the car, in that case the ticket definitely wouldn’t have gone away if I’d have taken it in–I’d just be proving that I had been driving without insurance and fined.
I’ve already printed out the new insurance card 
In Miami, Florida, if you didn’t put the sticker on, you got a ticket. You brought it to the courthouse and had it dismissed for a cool $5.
The cops patrolled a few places looking for expired tags - university parking lots, airport parking lots, mall parking lots, office building parking lots… basically, anywhere they could write a lot of tickets with minimal effort and little chance of actually encountering the driver.
I suspect Houston has a similar patrol
My son thought he could just put a computer generated year sticker on his plate and delay payment for a month or so. But he was pulled over for a burned out turn signal bulb and they ran the plate, found out it must be a fake sticker, and booked him into jail. They let him go in an hour, and he payed a fine with no record, but it taught him a big lesson.
When I was in Florida for a job for a few months, I had licence plates from Illinois.
I worked overnight in a hotel and my new tag was for September 1st. I remember saying “Mark you have to put your sticker on.” So on August 31st I started my shift and it was done on September 1st.
I said “Let me put the tag on the plate.” Then I said “No, do it later when you get home.”
So I started for home, drove about 5 miles and a cop pulled me over for driving with expired plates. I said "No, officer, I have the tag in the glove compartment, and I showed it to him. He said "That’s not where it goes and you were driving with expired tags. And he gave me a ticket.
I went to the court house two days later and showed them my tags were current and they dismissed the ticket for a $5.00 court fee.
My sticker fell off! I didn’t know it and I was made to pull to the side during a license check. The cop didn’t believe me when I told him the plate was valid, but when I asked him to run the plate he did. It came back valid and he let me go with no ticket. I got a new sticker shortly afterwards though. I don’t like being pulled over.
Well, to add to the chorus above, this just happened to me in May. I actually was driving on expired plates for two weeks, but I had ordered the new sticker over the Internet on, let’s say, May 13. May 15 the cops come around my street in the morning and leave me a ticket for expired plates. I contested it over the mail with a receipt from my online transaction and it was decided in my favor. (I still had not received the actual sticker until May 18 or so) Total cost: $0.
Or perhaps somebody stole it. I was pulled over once, and the cop had already run my registration before he approached my car, and told me that somebody had probably stolen my sticker, so I’d have to contact the DMV for a new one. Given the fact that the glue on those things seems to be some magical adhesive that welds itself to the plate on contact, I don’t know HOW somebody managed to peel the damned thing off intact, and having it FALL off seems highly unlikely. At any rate, after finding out that the DMV wanted to charge me $35 or some such thing for a replacement sticker, I decided that since I was pretty close to renewal, I would just wait a few weeks and get the next year’s sticker as soon as I could. Since my car is a January sticker, and they send out renewals a couple months ahead of time, I got to be the very first guy in town sporting the new sticker color for the next year …
Why did I feel that I could risk waiting the few weeks? Well, one other time many years before that, the state screwed up and didn’t mail out renewal notices. Doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility for renewing your registration of course, but without the notice, I didn’t think about it. I was something like two months expired by the time a cop noticed it. There was a fairly minimal penalty.
DO NOT, however, try to make a fake one yourself to avoid the registration fee. I knew somebody who was out of work for an extended time, and getting desperate where money was concerned. He tried that and got caught. That’s a felony, at least in CA, and he was damned lucky that “first offence” considerations made the judge knock it down to a misdemeanor, and not sentence him to any jail time beyond the day he spent in the clink before being ROR’ed after getting arrested.
Sticker stealing was common in Miami. It was common knowledge that you should put the sticker on and then slice it up with a razor into many, many small pieces.
A friend of mine had a thief cut the corner of her license plate off with tin snips.
If you renew online, you should have a receipt/confirmation email…print that out and carry it with you…
I had a similar experience when parking at the Metro in Virginia - my inspection had expired. Got to the car at the end of the day and there was a gift from the local police.
I couldn’t get too upset, I’m the dork that forgot to have it inspected, but it was annoying.
By contrast, last fall I got pulled over for expired license plates. I had completely forgotten they were due to expire, and the replacement notice either never arrived, or got misplaced. The policeman was awfully nice, and didn’t ticket me. May have helped that I looked reasonably respectable, was polite and embarassed, and was a block from home.
Anyway - in addition to proof of being out of town, and proof of insurance, have a copy of your internet-renewal confirmation if at all possible.
Oh - another one, semi-related. When I arrived home after college ended one year (college being in another state), I got pulled over for expired inspection the very next morning.
I had a book from the driver’s ed program that clearly stated “if you have been out of state while your inspection expired, you have 48 hours to get the car inspected”.
The policeman was not impressed and ticketed me.
As I was due to be moving out of state - permanently - 2 weeks later, I couldn’t make my own court date; my parents got a note from a lawyer-friend of theirs attesting to the statute, and it was dismissed.
Relevance to your situation: Look to see if Texas has any similar regs re being out of the state. Even if the policeman doesn’t believe it, a judge would.
I have direct experience in TX, but of course YMMV.
I recieved my sticker in the mail last year but managed to lose it before I could put it on. Decided that I wasn’t going to spend another 27.50 to replace it and just drove the car as was for the next year.
I was pulled over three or four times for expired tags. I explained the situation to the officers and they confirmed that the tags were indeed current on the radio and let me go with an admonishment to get the sticker replaced.
This year I put the sticker on immediately upon receipt.
This is what I was going to say. That and any other compelling evidence suggesting your story is true (receipt from airport parking, boarding passes, etc) should be enough.