MPI is moving away from licence plate validation stickers
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2016 (3638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba is moving on from fastening little square stickers to its licence plates.
The tiny adhesives displaying once-vital information from the corners of the provincial vehicle marker will no longer be required as of March 1.
Part of the reason is some police cruisers are equipped with automated licence-plate readers.
“You can scan thousands of vehicles without stopping them,” said Staff Sgt. Rob Riffel of the Winnipeg Police Service.
The plate readers come with two cameras pointing forward — one on the driver side and one on the passenger side of the cruiser — and one facing backward. “It’s running in the background. If it comes up with the plate of an unregistered vehicle or a suspended driver, it will register as a hit and the officer will stop that vehicle,” Riffel said.
The readers look like a narrow strobe light, Riffel said, and are fastened to either the cruiser’s front push bar or the siren-light mount. The readers cost $30,000 apiece. Six WPS cruisers assigned to traffic duty use the equipment.
Officers in other police cruisers must manually input a licence plate number into an on-board computer to get the vehicle’s status.
RCMP and Brandon police also employ licence -plate readers.
Riffel said the MPI stickers “are really irrelevant” today, because they are for five-year periods “and a lot of things can happen during that time,” such as insurance expiring.
MPI said the elimination of stickers will save $200,000 a year.
The move is the result of ongoing discussions between MPI and police, MPI spokesman Brian Smiley said.
Due to MPI’s staggered, five-year renewal system, the sticker transition won’t be completely phased out until March 2021. People renewing during that period will be given blank stickers to cover up existing adhesives on their licence plates.
— staff