Should Wyomingites be slicing up the registration tags on their license plates?
The popular Twitter account Today Years Old tells drivers that slicing through a vehicle's registration tag with a razor blade is a great way to “prevent thieves from stealing it.”
The theory is that if the sticker is sufficiently sliced, no one would be able to remove it intact. They’ll be deterred by the crisscrossing cuts, since any attempt to steal the sticker would yield a few unusable pieces.
Why someone would steal a registration tag is to presumable avoid paying the annual fee to keep their vehicle road legal.
But does cutting your tags work? Is it necessary?
And if you don’t, who out there is stealing your registration tags?
Designed For Difficulty
Anyone who’s put a new registration sticker on their license plates knows that they can be very tricky to get off. That adhesive is some pretty impressive stuff.
Jordan Young, deputy public affairs officer with the Wyoming Department of Transportation, said they’re designed to be difficult in that way.
That’s probably why most people just stick new tags on to of their old ones.
“We have confirmed with our registration sticker vendor that Wyoming's stickers are specifically designed to be difficult to remove once properly placed,” she said. “For best performance, the manufacturer recommends they be placed on clean and dry plates in temperatures above minus 10 degrees F.”
Since most Wyoming days are above minus 10 degrees, there’s a wide window of opportunity for ideal application.
To that end, Young doesn’t advise people slice up their registration stickers after applying. She sees it as an unnecessary precaution.
“There is no need to razor blade them because they will naturally tear if tampered with,” she said.
Oh, The '90s
Automotive writer Aaron Turpen said seeing video, which has more than 1.6 million view and hundreds of comments, was a throwback to the 1990s.
“That was our fix back in the day,” he said. “Stealing stickers used to happen a lot when I was in Utah, because cops couldn’t auto-verify the plates via camera back then.”
Turpen has sliced his fair share of registration stickers, but hasn’t done it in a long time.
“I don’t know how big of a problem this kind of thing is now,” he said.
Young added that WYDOT “does not have any indication” that registration theft is a significant issue in Wyoming.
If someone’s determined to get the sticker, they’re not stopping there. They’re going for the full plate. It’s easier and faster to just snag that than picking at that pesky sticker.
Insurance Fraud?
Matt Bard, shop manager at FM Automotive in Cheyenne, said he’s dealt with this unique kind of theft before, but it’s unusual for people to go straight for the sticker.
“I have run into a couple of instances where people tried taking just the tags, but it's actually a lot more common for people to steal your whole dang plate,” he said.
Stealing a registration sticker will save you about $150, but stealing an entire license plate is a high-risk, high-reward move for someone with a particular mindset.
Bard said it’s about more than just the yearly sticker.
“It’s not so much about registration fees as uninsured drivers,” he said. “If you have no proof of insurance, you can't renew your tags, and some people don't want to pay for the insurance, then turn around and go pay for the tag.
"When we see stuff happening with plates, it's primarily because someone’s driving an uninsured vehicle.”
Stealing a license plate might seem like an unnecessarily risky way to get out of paying insurance, but Bard said there’s a method to that madness.
“The longer you go without insurance, the higher it gets,” he said. “When uninsured drivers do get insurance, they can tell that you didn't have any before, so the rates skyrocket.
"If they know you were driving uninsured, it's a real high liability, so not having insurance jacks their rates up.”
Bard said it’s possible to steal a registration sticker, but they’re “not very easy to get off if you're not careful.”
The most likely outcome is a damaged sticker that’s missing most of the adhesive needed to adhere to the license plate, or several years of stickers underneath it.
In that case, stealing a whole license plate from a (presumably) insured vehicle with up-to-date tags solves the problem. It’s illegal and not very logical, but a fix is a fix.
Even so, Bard said license plate and registration tag theft is "not a big problem in Cheyenne." The easiest thing to do is get your vehicle insured and registered — it's the law, after all.
“The courthouse isn’t going to give you tags if you don’t have the proof of insurance,” Bard said.
Spare The Blade
If you haven’t sliced up your registration tag yet, there probably isn’t much need to do it.
“That method works, but it’s probably not very necessary anymore,” Turpen said. “It doesn’t hurt, at least not until you go to remove it to put on next year’s sticker.”
In any case, Turpen thinks many drivers would be stumped before they started. They might have the sticker, but no means to slice it.
“You’ll need a razor blade to do it, and I’m surprised how many people don’t have those now,” he said.
Maybe they could try painting it on? Or just pay the required fee to keep your vehicle registered and road-legal.
That's a fair slice without any slicing.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
