The rise in fake or expired license plates has been robbing governments of needed revenue and making it harder to enforce traffic laws, causing officials to take more aggressive enforcement measures. The crackdown on “temp tags” comes in response to a problem that officials say has festered for years but exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fatalities from car crashes rose, while pedestrian deaths in 2021 reached their highest level since the early 1980s, The New York Times reports. “From what I am seeing, there is a real breakdown in automotive law and order,’’ said Dan Borgmeyer, the St. Charles, Mo., mayor who encouraged citizens to report expired tags in his St. Louis suburb. The closing of government offices during the pandemic caused disruptions and delays in routine bureaucratic functions like processing car registrations, and many states extended deadlines. At the same time, police departments reduced or halted traffic stops for minor offenses, because of staffing shortages and the intense scrutiny after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.
Officials say that many temporary paper plates are obtained illegally through networks of questionable car dealers and brokers. Others were issued legitimately, but their owners have kept them long past their expiration date to avoid paying insurance, registration fees and taxes. Some are simply counterfeits created on an average home printer. The temporary tags allow drivers to avoid tolls and evade cameras that enforce speeding rules, resulting in states trying to modernize their laws to reduce fraud. Starting next year, Texas will replace temporary paper tags with metal ones, which will be more difficult to forge. New Jersey tightened restrictions on car dealers, including fines of up to $5,000 each time a dealer violates the rules around temporary tags. In Washington, council member Brianne Nadeau proposed a bill allowing the city to tow or boot a car with improper temporary tags. Nadeau says the fake tags contribute to a broader erosion of traffic safety by allowing drivers to evade detection by speed cameras. “When I am in my car and someone is zooming by and I look at the plate, it is usually a temporary tag,” she said.