The vehicle registration sticker will soon be a thing of the past.
Come January, Pennsylvanians will no longer be required to affix registration stickers to their license plates.
Instead, law enforcement vehicles will now be equipped with license plate readers that alert them if a vehicle has an expired registration.
Drivers will still have to have their vehicles registered and inspected, however.
Registration stickers will be issued and must be present on license plates until January, said Craig Yetter, a PennDot spokesperson.
The last registration sticker will be issued Dec. 30, 2016.
After that, customers will no longer be required to display a registration sticker on their license plates, he said.
Customers will not have to be issued new license plates.
The elimination of registration stickers has multiple benefits, PennDOT said.
The agency estimates that $2 million will be saved per year in mailing costs and an additional $1 million in product costs.
Those savings will be used for the creation of a grant program that provides license plates readers to law enforcement, PennDOT said.
Beginning in January, customers will have to go online to print out and save their registration cards. Eventually, technology will allow customers to upload their registration cards to their smartphones, PennDOT said.
The online renewal process for vehicle registrations will be more convenient for customers, the agency said.
The new technology for patrol cars is called an Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) unit. It will be mounted on police cars and equipped with a camera.
The camera will take a snapshot of license plates on passing cars and compare numbers with information from the Justice Network (J-NET) system, Yetter said.
Officers will then receive an audible alert if the plate is tied to an expired registration, insurance coverage or a stolen vehicle.
This method is an advantage over the use of stickers for registration as those can be counterfeited, sold or affixed to “dead” plates, PennDOT said.