Vertical Plate Law 8/1/2010

A Victory for Custom Motorcycle Riders and Builders in Minnesota

Some of you may remember that the Minnesota State Patrol brought some concerns about vertical license plates to the Minnesota Legislature during the 2008 session. The state patrol, like many other police agencies, use license plate scanners in their patrol cars that can read up to 1,000 plates per minute, the problem was they couldn't read the vertical plates on motorcycles or cars. It didn't take too much to sneak this law through and after the 2008 session vertical plates were illegal, but not for long.

Our State Coordinator got together with A.B.A.T.E. of Minnesota's lobbying team and they started to work the problem. That is when our good friends State Senators Amy Koch and Ray Vandeveer stepped forward to carry our bill.
This wasn't an easy slam dunk, the state patrol didn't want to give up its ability to read motorcycle plates and Mack didn't want the custom bike folks to lose the right to trick out their rides. It took a lot of creative thinking to come up with a solution, but in the end that's what happened. The new law hit the Governor's desk and he signed it into law. We should also send out a special word of thanks to Senator Steve Murphy for helping move this bill through his Transportation Committee.

Here is how it works. The DVS will start to offer vertical reading license plates. You will be able to mount these plates in vertical license plate brackets and law enforcement's scanners will still be able to read them. If you have something to hide from the law it doesn't matter what kind of plate you are running and I can't help you. Riders can start placing orders with the DVS in July and the new law will take effect August 1st. The plates can be ordered just like vanity plates, veteran plates, etc. You will have to pay an extra fee for the plate but if you run vertical plates these new vertical reading plates should keep you out of trouble and if you sell the bike you can keep the plate for your next custom ride.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned from this whole experience. The first is pretty simple; it pays to have friends down at the State Capitol. Those letters, emails, and personnel contacts have really paid off and having 1,000 boots on the ground for Bikeday helped make a difference as well.

The second lesson, guard well your freedom, once gone its hell to get back. The bottom line is we need to keep a full time presence at the Capitol so pesky little laws like this one don't fly under our radar. You can change a law back but you always seem to lose a little bit of freedom when you do.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and thank you for supporting freedom of the road.

Todd Riba
A.B.A.T.E. of MN Legislative Director
952-239-0929