Expired License Plates

This post may not click with non-Missouri residents, but it irks me to see so many cars with expired plates.  When I got my first car in 1968, a 1960 Comet station wagon, I was nervous about driving it from St. Louis to Philadelphia with an overdue state inspection.  Back then in Pennsylvania, one got new plates every year and it was easy to see who wasn’t licensing a car.

Now in Missouri and especially in the St. Louis Metro area, it's common to see cars with no plates, expired plates and expired temporary tags.

Many of these cars are driven with no insurance because it takes proof of insurance to license or renew plates.  Further, people without plates or expired temporary tags haven’t paid sales taxes, which can be significant.  Those with expired plates (no current sticker) haven’t paid personal property taxes.

 I understand that many people can’t afford the high personal property taxes.  Perhaps those taxes should be replaced with higher income taxes.  Additionally, some wealthy people avoid Missouri taxes by licensing their cars elsewhere.  I recently saw a BMW with Montana plates at Costco gassing up.  Just to be friendly, I asked the driver how he liked living there.  He said he had never been to Montana, but simply licensed his cars there to save money.

 The police claim that they don’t have the time to stop these scofflaws, and I understand.  The entire forces of the metro area could spend their whole day trying to do so.

I have a solution.  License private companies to "boot" cars with expired plates more than two months overdue.  Require the scofflaws to pay a $200 fee to have them unlocked when they then license their vehicles.  The result is that no police officers waste their time, and unlicensed and uninsured cars slowly get off the streets.