"It's OK to hide your license plate!"
MOBILETRAXX ELECTRONICS
Enter subhead content here Published: 01.24.2007 Panel: It's OK to hide your license plate By
Howard Fischer CAPITOL
MEDIA SER Legislators rejected a proposal
by Sen. Ken Cheuvront, D-Phoenix, which would have made it illegal to put anything on a license plate that obscures the letters
and numbers. Cheuvront said it's a public-safety
issue. He cited one incident in his district of a hit-and-run accident in which witnesses were unable to read the license
plate of the fleeing vehicle because it had a plastic cover obscuring it. Tom Van Dorn, lobbyist for
the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, agreed. But a majority of the committee
said that's just a smoke screen. "The real issue revolving
around this … is that cities are not getting the revenues off the photo radar," said Sen. Robert Blendu, And Sen. Pam Gorman, R-Anthem,
called the use of cameras to enforce traffic laws unconstitutional. Van Dorn told legislators
license plate films that block photo-radar cameras interfere with new technology being used by the state Department of Public
Safety, which quickly scans the license plates of passing vehicles and compares what it sees with a database of stolen vehicles.
But Gorman questioned the
propriety of the whole DPS program, saying license-plate covers provide "your only protection against Big Brother's watchful
eye." Cheuvront countered, "At the
end of the day, people who put those things on their plates are trying to evade the law." Another measure aimed at photo
radar is awaiting House debate. A proposal by Rep. Kirk Adams,
R-Mesa, would make it easier for motorists caught by photo enforcement to escape fines and points on their licenses. All
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joe.scott@phantomplate.com Land:
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