Q: Do the cameras used by toll roads or express lanes, such as those on the 405 Express Lanes, have the capability to identify vehicles with expired registration tags and issue citations accordingly?
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– Wayne Li, Rancho Palos Verdes
A: Yes, and no.
Cameras along the 405 Express Lanes in Orange County snag photos of vehicles’ license plates. That way, the ones without required transponders can be charged a toll if they have an account — and charged and possibly fined if they don’t.
“We get a shot of the license plate … you can see if the tag is current,” said Joel Zlotnik, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which manages the 405 and 91 express lanes in O.C.
“(But) we do not — nor do we have any authority — to share this information,” he added. “There’s no mechanism even to share (it).”
The state has privacy laws on what cannot be shared, he said.
Honk also checked in with the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which operates the 73, 133, 241 and 261 toll roads in Orange County.
TCA “uses automated-license-plate recognition solely to identify vehicles for the purpose of toll collection and to verify accounts,” spokeswoman Michelle Kennedy told Honk in an email.
California Highway Patrol officers are assigned to the Express Lanes and those toll roads and can certainly see expired tags and choose to pull over offenders.
But tollway cameras aren’t there to help nab registration scofflaws: “Tolling agencies (in California) don’t have that authority,” Zlotnik said.
Q: I spotted this tag on a California license plate recently. What gives? Is this for car-rental agencies or maybe companies who have a large fleet of vehicles?
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– Scott Robertson, Long Beach
A: Good thinking, Scott.
Scott sent along a photo with a sticker that goes where the registration tag goes — in fact, that is what it is.
This one is white with black lettering saying, “California Permanent Fleet.”
Owners with at least 25 vehicles can get the special stickers and skip adhering registration tags on the plates each year, as the rest of us have to. The owner pays the same annual amount, with $1 added on each vehicle for processing.
Police officers can run the plates to ensure the registration is current, with the Department of Motor Vehicles sending out notices reminding the owners when payments are due.
The California program has been around since 1979.
“As of April 20, 2026, there are 513,508 vehicles registered in the program,” Ronald Ongtoaboc, a DMV spokesperson, told Honk in an email.
HONKIN’ FACT: One of many replicas of the car that starred in the 1980s TV series “Knight Rider,” which sits idle in the Volo Museum in Illinois, recently got a $50 speeding ticket from New York City. Another black Pontiac Trans Am, also with a “KNIGHT” license plate, was doing 36 in a 25 mph zone in Brooklyn; a photo of the suspect car caught by the speed camera came with the ticket.
The museum’s car isn’t even registered and has only a novelty license plate of the one used on the show. Museum officials had no idea how they got tapped — but they did find it all amusing and requested a hearing to challenge the citation. (Source: The Associated Press.)
To ask Honk questions, reach him at [email protected]. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/tag/honk. Twitter: @OCRegisterHonk
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