Q. I have seen California license plates with red lettering and a black background. What would be the consequence of getting caught modifying your license plates?
– Trung Le, Riverside
A. Honk saw one of those just last week. Sweet-looking, yes?
And illegal.
Motorists use vinyl wrap, which is pretty accessible, to create that color scheme, said Casey Ramstead, an officer and spokesman for the California Highway Patrol out of its Woodland Hills station house. There are other colors, too, used to creatively gussy up a ride.
A popular choice is white lettering with a black background, albeit the Department of Motor Vehicles does allow those colors if digital plates produced by an approved company.
“It gives us an easy reason to stop someone,” Ramstead said of illegal plates. “That is the silly thing. … Why are you drawing attention to yourself?
“You are not allowed to alter your plates, period.”
Officers can write either of two California Vehicle Codes for such a license-plate violation.
“First is a fix-it ticket, and the other one is for trying to avoid the law,” Ramstead said, adding vinyl users would likely get hit with the first one as the covering can just be pulled off. “I have heard that (second) one can be for over $1,000.”
Officers with a keen sense of traffic laws can easily spot the illegal ones.
“When you are looking up plates all day, you tend to notice things,” Ramstead said.
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Q. Anaheim lowered speed limits recently on many streets. An example is Katella Avenue, between Brookhurst and Euclid streets, where it was lowered from 40 mph to 35. This is a six-lane, divided road with no facing houses and some mostly not-very-busy businesses. The rest of the road remains at 40 mph. Today, I drove along West Street, a two-lane street with a yellow stripe, lined with houses. The posted limit is also 35 mph. It doesn’t make sense. When the changes were made, no special signage was posted to call attention to them, and I’m sure that many like me who have been driving Katella for years don’t think to read the new signs. The whole thing screams SPEED TRAP to me. Who can I contact in Sacramento to look into this?
– Mark Hosmer, Anaheim
A. In Anaheim, the City Council approved 169 stretches of roadway getting reduced speed limits, mostly by 5 mph, in the name of safety. In the wake of a state law making it easier for municipalities to reduce speed limits, the traffic engineer had a study done and recommendations were taken to the council, with signs getting changed this past summer.
The Katella stretch you mentioned, Mark, has a lot of driveways and pedestrian usage, said Mike Lyster, a city spokesman, among the factors considered when lowering speed limits. Another factor is if a school is about.
He said that Anaheim officials tried to get the word out by helping TV and print reporters tell the public about the changes and by deploying social media. Lyster insisted it wasn’t about issuing tickets to raise revenue; in the end, he said, that doesn’t pencil out.
“Speed traps are illegal,” Lyster said.
A speed trap, he said as an example, could be a change from 50 mph to 25 at the bottom of a hill, not a 5 mph decrease with a study providing a good reason for a drop.
For speed-limit specifics, in Anaheim or elsewhere, Honk suggests ringing up the traffic engineer in the town’s public works department.
To ask Honk questions, reach him at honk@ocregister.com. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/tag/honk. Twitter: @OCRegisterHonk