It Is Against the Law to Coat Your License Plate to Evade Traffic Cameras - Lehto's Law Ep. 4.18

hello and welcome once again to Latos law I'm Steve leg to turn it law in state of Michigan I'm practicing on over 26 years in the fields of consumer protection and lemon law laughter about the several places Road and track calm and I've written a few books as well today we're talking about it is against the law to coat your license plate to evade a traffic camera it's against the law to coat your license plate to evade traffic cameras what we're talking about here is modern technology run amuck you know that states are now often implementing these devices that sit at intersections and if somebody runs a red light bright flash goes off and a high-definition camera photographs the back of the car they then run the license plate and they mail that lucky driver a ticket saying your car ran a red light pay this ticket it's often an insane amount of money and many people are disturbed by these big brother-ish things because the fact that these machines just sit up there and write tickets all day long and it's not just red-light cameras I've seen those I've also seen speeding cameras where they set up a speed trap someplace and a device that sort and records your speed as you go by and if you go by too fast it then does the same thing photographs it back your car gets a copy your license plate they run it through the system they mail you a ticket congratulations you know it's several hundred dollars for driving too fast past this machine so these traffic cameras are out there now not all states use them okay but some states do and many states are using them more and more as a way to generate revenue and of course this is annoys everybody no one likes tickets everyone likes to drive fast and some of us even like to run through red lights I'm just joking I would never encourage that but the point is that these machines are out there so the first thing that happens people say well you know how fair is this you know I'm driving along and a device a machine a thing says I ran a red light can I fight this and there's you know I remember when traffic cameras first came out and there's always discussions about you know is this a violation of your due process who's the witness who's testifying against you on a constitutional issue here you know and and so people have been fighting these and arguing about these but someone came along with the ideas of a wait a second what if the machine the device the camera couldn't actually record what was on my license plate for some reason and I've heard ads for this I mean I've even heard the guys who invented on a talk show and what they did is they came up with a spray okay it's a can of aerosol spray and you spray it on your license plate and it doesn't appear to affect the appearance of the license plate okay and in fact what they say is it's it's a it's a clear coating that only becomes apparent when it's a really really bright flash like say a camera flash and they claim that the camera flash will then cause this coating to somehow reflect the light weirdly so that in the photograph of the license plate the the camera will not be able to get the data from the license plate it'll be obscured it'll be it'll be somehow blurred by this bright flash reflection off of this coating and I remember hearing ads in the radio for these guys saying that they'll sell you this stuff and if you get a ticket they'd even pay your ticket for you they were so convinced this stuff was good we'll talk about that in a second but what really caused me to think about this story today was I was reading the Daily Mail as I often do I had to find out what craziness is going on in the world and I came across the story about Gordon Ramsay now I like Gordon Ramsay I watch many of his shows I'd like to see him yell at people occasionally he makes people cry but Gordon Ramsay was doing an interview in England and he he this he's confessed to avoiding speed camera fines in the US by wrapping saran wrap around his Ferraris license plate now I think he's joking but the articles have been reprinted and passed along through different news organizations as if he's telling the truth and what he's saying is correct and you have to understand I think he's joking but if he's not ok you have to understand what he's saying here is not correct it says Ramsay is renowned for his love of speed and has sometimes been putting a scene putting vehicles through their paces on motorways around Los Angeles in the early hours of the morning and Ramsey claims that the police won't pull him over because of the saran wrap around his license plate now first of all it makes no sense because the saran wrap would be something to prevent the cameras from voter graphing the license plate but obviously if a police car is driving along next to him and he's speeding they're not gonna say gee we can't pull him over he's got strippers license plate okay that's not gonna prevent a cop from pulling you over but Gordon Ramsay told the mirror that he seldom gets tickets because the cling film on his license plate reflects speed camera flashes and stops his high-speed cars from being identified okay the father of four 51 years old newspapers he told the paper I Drive my cars at night when no one can see me well okay you can see at night just not as well but he goes I'll take it out at 2:30 in the morning on the freeway and I'll blast on the motorway and no police catch me and no cameras because I wrapped my number plates with cling film as your friend of saran wrap it's a great thing for a chef when they get your own Ferrari just wrap it with cling film he said again I think he might be joking but he says it won't photograph it reflects brilliant it's a great tip I'm trying to help you so get rolls of cling film when you get your Ferrari and wrap the front so you won't get caught speeding but like I said I think he's joking but I think a lot of people unfortunately don't get the joke or if he's not joking and this is crazy but the article points out that the speed limit on most of us handles freeways of 65 miles per hour Ramsey's Ferrari California T can do almost three times that speed and he says else when the article that he owns eight Ferraris in Britain as well and he said that he feels uncomfortable about driving to work in his 160 thousand pound Italian supercar one hundred sixty thousand pounds is not the weight that's the cost in England he's also rejected criticism that he is a wealthy show-off he says I get a lot of criticism for being blunt and brutally honest it's because I have never forgotten this day where I've come from and how hard I've worked and you know that's the thing you know Gordon Ramsay's blunt I think he's joking but let's let's suppose you could wrap your license plate in I ran ramp and or some other generic cling film and that would somehow keep a traffic camera from photographing your license plate accurately okay let's assume that that's a possibility I don't know if it is or not or let's just talk about that spray that they sell that they say you can spray your license plate with this stuff and it's it's not visible to the naked eye but it causes when the flash goes off and causes the flash to obscure the license plate in such a way that it can't be read the question is is this legal or not and the funny thing is of course it is completely illegal surprise surprise and that was the funny thing as I heard these guys on the radio talking about this invention of there is the spray that you put in the license plates and the guy was saying you know what we're doing is is so certain to work that if you buy our product and you get a license you get a ticket from when he's you know license plate reading cameras will pay the ticket for you and someone called and said yeah but is what you're doing legal is it legal and they said oh yeah absolutely it's legal no these guys aren't attorneys they're you know guys pitching snake well I mean license plate spray and they're you know they're saying no it's perfectly legal and so I'm an attorney when someone tells me something's perfectly legal I think about and go home I wonder is a law against that it turns out there is so as I pointed out previously the law books behind me the blue ones are Michigan laws and I'm talking about Michigan and specific but I glanced at a couple other states and it appears that most states have got similar laws what I'm about to tell you and if wherever you are you want to check this type in your own state and then motor vehicle code and then license plates I'm gonna get something will pop up so you know if you're in Nevada the Nevada license plate code and you'll probably find this but I'm looking at the Michigan Motor Vehicle Code with respect to to license plates its MCL two fifty seven point two two five and I've mentioned before for the two attorneys in the audience that Michigan's Motor Vehicle Code is MCL two fifty seven and then this whole section the eleven laws at 1401 the motor vehicle stores prepare acts at 1301 and so on but it's a whole section in there about what constitutes an automobile versus a motorcycle what laws you know about everything so there's a section on there on just simply addressing lace plates as you might imagine msel to 57.2 to five it says that a license plate issued for a vehicle they keep referring to it as a registration plate I'm gonna called a license plate that's what we caught issued for a vehicle shall be attached to the rear of the vehicle a registration plate issued for a truck or a truck tractor or road tractor should be attached to the front of the vehicle so typical passenger cars the license plates gotta be on the back of the vehicle okay and it's kind of funny that they have to spell this stuff out but as you can imagine if they didn't spell the stuff up people would just do whatever they wanted so for instance a registration plate shall at all times be securely fastened in a horizontal position to the vehicle so as to prevent the plate from swinging okay you can't have a loose plate back there and it's got to be horizontal it's kind of funny I'd never thought about this but if they had said that you get some hipsters who turn their plate sideways cuz it's cool kinda like how you hold your guns sideways when you're on it you know on a TV show but you know it's cool man can I hold my gun sideways sure knock yourself out well you put your license plate sideways no you can't the law says specifically you cannot put your license plate sideways the license plate has also got to be clearly visible and then the plate shall be maintained free from foreign materials that obscure or partially obscure the registration information and a clearly legible condition okay and it's interesting about this because that was probably originally thought of just simply as keeping your license plate clean okay we've all seen it you live up the country you're driving down the road out the middle of nowhere and some of the guy goes by and his license plate is either covered with muck or it's so rusted and beat-up that it's been like sandblasted by the passing gravel on the road and the license place no longer legible technically speaking that's against the law but here's the part that matters okay the plate shall be maintained free from foreign materials obscure or partially obscure the registration information free from foreign materials so the question is when you wrap your license plate in saran wrap when you pull a Ramsey on your license plate is it free from foreign material no it's not it's it's it's got foreign material that's what saran wrap is it's it's it's not a piece of the license plate that means it's foreign it's material it's foreign material okay uh and and so the question also then becomes well what about the spray you know it spray the aerosol on the on the plate the argument that the guys are making when I heard them talking about this was they said well you can still see the plate therefore what we're doing is not illegal but the law says free from foreign materials that obscure or partially obscure the registration information so if the stuff you're spraying on the license plate even partially obscures the information then it's violating the law and you'd say well I spray it I look at it looks fine to me except for in a bright flash goes off now you can't see it what's obscuring it is the spray so I'm pretty certain that most judges look at this Gogi yeah sprayed a foreign material on the license plate and the only reason you did that it wasn't to preserve the license plate it wasn't like you're putting it there and saying isn't protecting the plate you're putting it there specifically to obscure the information from a traffic camera okay so that is against the law no question so when Gordon Ramsay says that he does this he doesn't necessarily address it as to whether it's legal or not he simply addresses whether it works or not and that's a big difference the man's a chef okay it's not an attorney I would never dare to cook for him so I wouldn't take legal advice from him but you know you sticked your specialties but he doesn't say it's legal or illegal he's just simply says it works okay and I question that whether you wrap the front end of your Ferrari and saran wrap it's gonna keep a police office from pulling you over for speeding at 2:30 in the morning in Los Angeles but another story altogether but the bigger question as many people ask this - let me ask a questions even if I'm in a state with traffic cameras and the state has a law that says I cannot put a foreign material on the license plate if I spray the license plate with this stuff and then toss the can away can they tell I did that and I guess the answer probably is no I mean my understanding is that the stuff is not detectable that you would spray it you can't see it okay so you say okay steep so I spray the stuff my license plate I go through a red light camera intersection and I blow the red light light goes off and I've seen the light go off by the way in broad daylight it's like a it's like a lightning strike it's it's amazing how bright these lights are I didn't trigger it I saw it happen somebody else but so you spray your license plate with this stuff okay even though it's illegal and then you drive through and and the camera goes off and and it turns out that it's correct the devices click basically cannot be read okay if the license plate cannot be interpreted and you're gone and the only evidence they have of you doing this is the one blurry photograph of your license plate then they can't contact you correct and the answer that of course is in that case they can't so here's the thing from a practical viewpoint the license plates pray could work I don't know if it works I've never tried it I've never seen this stuff I mean I've heard about it read about it never actually hold a can of it my hands I don't know I've never tried it could it work and the answer is well if if in fact it does what they claim it does it could work meaning that you could go through that or you could do a speed you know it's a speed camera and the photograph might not be legible and they get an illegible photograph and they look at go we can't figure out who this is then yeah you might get away with it okay so again I'm not sure about the saran wrap on the license plate or the saran wrap or on the front of the car for whatever reason but could these things work in theory yes they could work in theory but see I'm not an optical engineer here I'm not here to explain to you the optics or whether or not this works or how it works or why it works people ask me questions is it legal it's caso so question number one is it legal and the answer of course is no it would not be legal you'd be violating at least in Michigan MCL two fifty seven to twenty five subparagraph 2 okay because you'd be putting a foreign material on your license plate which would obscure it or partially obscure it so you'd be breaking the law and by the way a person who violates this section is responsible for a civil infraction it's a ticket it's not a crime okay no one's going to jail because you sprayed your license plate so some people I know right now going I'll Steve wait a second you're telling me it's illegal but it ain't that illegal and the odds are getting caught are very very slim and even if I do get caught it's just a civil infraction but if I have this stuff and it works I won't get caught well you know as an attorney I can only advise you on the law that's I'm telling you that is it legal yes or no no it's not legal would it you know will it work I'm not sure could it work yes it could work okay so in short answer is it against the law I see it as and the state of Michigan does as well and I think most other states do too the question simply is whether they would catch you on film and whether they catch in real life and actually ticket you for this and that's the big question so as for the saran wrap I can't speak to that maybe we can do some experiments but I don't think it works one way or the other I'd love to see Gordon Ramsay's Ferrari go by with saran wrap around either the front end of it or the license plate it's hard to imagine doing that for a car that cost six figures but as for the spray it is against the law will you get caught don't know is it really bad if you get caught yeah not that bad but it's you know it's a civil infraction so again I'm a lawyer it is against the law to cut your license plate to evade traffic cameras questions your comments is I'll shoot my way late does a lot of calm le h tus la w calm I'm on Twitter at Steve let to ste vele H do and it shows on iTunes stitcher SoundCloud pod mean Google Play and YouTube thanks for watching thanks for listening bye bye