What's up with the no license plates on cars?

In our recent trip to the U.S. we noticed a phenomenon that has us stumped - everywhere we went, there were cars driving around with no license plate whatsoever (no plate, no temporary card, nothing). One of these cars stopped near us, and a little old lady got out. What’s the deal here? Are license plates optional in the U.S.?

As far as I know, it’s illegal not to have a license plate somewhere on your car. Are you sure they just didn’t have one in the front? Some states only require a plate in the back. Or could it have been in the back window?

Now that you mention it, though, I’ve seen more and more cars recently without any plates visible, front or back, bumper or window. Makes me wonder what the fine for that is…

I’ve seen a increasing number of no plate cars also, over maybe 5 years, I wonder how they get away with it. I figure the cops are busy pulling over people who are more likely to pay fines. I mean if you have a plate stolen you can get the fine dismissed, and if you can’t afford the registeration you won’t be able to pay the fine either.

Mnay new cars don’t have them yet, you know.

Nope, no plates at all in the back, anywhere. They might have had one in the front, but as far as I know, front plates might be optional, but back plates aren’t. Maybe the plates were all stolen; we saw a couple dozen cars without plates in 12 days. That seems like a lot of stolen plates, but it was across five states, too.

Cops don’t care who can pay fines. It’s not a business.

Sure, it’s a business, it’s just a business that has the option of throwing people in jail when they don’t pay. :slight_smile:

:smiley: , yea right, and would you like to buy another bridge in Brooklyn?

In our state there’s supposed to be a temporary tag with an expiration date.

Different states have different temporary tags - here in MN, you’ll see a yellow card in a back window. Thing is, you can’t see them at all in a car that has tinted rear windows…

I know that some states don’t issue police cars license plates.
Can’t say I’ve noticed what you notice. I see plates on 99.5% or more of cars I encounter in a day.
What part of the states was your trip in?

Oh, I was driving around without plates for months. It depends on the state and what type of temporary tags they issue.

When I bought a car in Illinois, they issued temporary plates (cardboard) that had a temporary license plate number on them to show that it was my car. The permanent plates came in the mail (I was kinda lazy about putting them on, though)

When I did the same thing in California, they kept the blank dealer plates (i.e. Honda of [town]) on the car and then stuck some tiny-ass sticker on the front windshield with a really long number on it that pertained to some temporary identification. The plates eventually came in the mail. I did get a ticket while the temp sticker was on the windshield though-my meter ran out and they ID-ed me by that sticker and the ticket came to my house in the mail. I imagine it would be the same with a speeding ticket.

Didn’t California used to not issue temporary license plates? In Texas, you are given a white temporary tag which is good for 21 days.

You are showing your age here. Thinking way back (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) California did have a paper, a paper whatyacallit. Looked like a bumper sticker with a string of numbers in great big print like 3-4"high by about 8-10" long, printed on regular plain paper.
The dealer would tape this onto your back bumper.
Of course if it rained, or you washed your car the damn thing was toast. not to mention what would happen if a kid walked by your parked car.
IIRC those things went away either in the late 50’s or early 60’s.
As long as we are tripping down California DMV memory lane, do recall having to have your registration mounted so that it could be read from outside the car?

Most states seem to be quite casual about it. A temporary card can be lying flat in the back window.
But in Detroit they ticketed everyone, so new car dealers would run to the DMV for you and pick up plates before they let the car off the lot. They couldn’t deliver cars on weekends.

It’s way before my time, but apparently there used to be a place for it on the steering column. The end-of-the-world SF classic Earth Abides, written in the late 1940s and set in San Francisco, has a scene where some characters are walking the Golden Gate Bridge, and it’s mentioned that the registration was still visible on the steering column.

I suppose that went out of style around the same time as pushbutton starters.

I’ve driven for over 25 years in New York state and Massachusetts and I can honestly say I could probably total up the number of cars I’ve seen driving with no plates AT ALL, not even a clearly visible cardboard one in the back window, on the fingers of one hand. It’s not done around here.

Having said that, I know of an island off the coast of Maine that has paved roads but no road or ferry connection to the mainland. Any cars out there have been brought over by barge. A lot of the cars out there (most?) don’t have plates. I think there is one police car that patrols the island, they don’t seem to care.

Around here, many illegal immigrants don’t bother getting them.

I don’t know; could be new cars, could be stolen plates; all I know is there was no identification visible from the back of the car, tinted windows or no. No dealer plates, no paper tag (we saw many of those), nothing on the bumper - nada, zip, zilch. We drove straight south from Calgary to Las Vegas, and we saw this in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (and probably in Wyoming and Arizona, too, but we weren’t in those states very long). I don’t think I’ve ever seen this anywhere in Canada, which is probably why it caught our eye so much.