After hearing complaints about streets filled with cars with expired temporary license tags, the mayor of St. Charles, Mo., invited his constituents to send in photos of bad plates.
He received more than 4,100 in a year — from a city of about 71,000 people.
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, alongside other chaos on American roads.
Fatalities from car crashes rose, while pedestrian deaths in 2021 reached their highest level since the early 1980s.
The rise in fake or expired plates has been robbing governments of needed revenue and making it harder to enforce traffic laws, which the American driver seems more emboldened than ever to ignore, part of a larger erosion of social mores.
Persons:
Charles
Organizations:
St, D.C
Locations:
Mo, Washington, “, Texas