Prevent theft of stickers by SCORING THEM WITH A RAZOR BLADE

I'm telling you about this, to help you avoid what happened to us.
Wednesday, when we left the Kealakekua library, my wife and I noticed that the Hawaii State, safety check sticker, had been stolen from our car. We think that it was stolen either at the library parking lot, or at the Kona International Airport on the weekend, when I was working for Alamo, car rental company.
Safety check inspections and the subsequent stickers are required in this state. Some scumbag stole my sticker, so he can put it on his car, to avoid being pulled over by the police. He must be driving an unregistered car, as you can't register a car in this state, without the proof of inspection CARD that goes with the sticker, and the thief doesn't have my card, just the sticker. So, he will probably steal someone's registration sticker too.

Now here's some weird facts:
The state did NOT provide me with a sticker that disintegrates when you try to pull it off. A sticker that disintegrates, would discourage thieves from stealing a sticker, because if it came off in pieces, it could never be re-used. The State of Hawaii SHOULD have known that they are issuing a stealable sticker, but I guess they don't. The CRIMINALS know that the sticker can be taken off intact, but the STATE doesn't know or care about that.
Now THIS fact to me is very weird. The face of the sticker was removed, but the underlying base remains intact, and that base is reflective, and it says, "VOID", all over it. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS VOID NONSENSE? I can CLEARLY SEE that the sticker face is gone, so why do I need to see, "VOID"? And WHYYYY is this base REFLECTIVE? My guess is that it's reflective, so that POLICE can easily see that my sticker is gone, and then pull me over for not having one. I pay for a sticker and have it put on, a thief steals it, and then I have to be cop bait, for something I didn't even do. Shouldn't the stolen sticker FACE say, "VOID"?
No, I DON'T get a free sticker to replace the one that was stolen. I called up the Toyota dealer, where I got the safety check and sticker, and they said that I have to get a NEW SAFETY CHECK TO GET A NEW STICKER. I have to PAY FOR ANOTHER INSPECTION, to get a new sticker.
But I WON'T be getting a new sticker, because I'm NOT going to pay for something that I already paid for six weeks ago. I'll take my chances with the police, and I'm really not worried about it much, because the police here are as lazy and uncaring as any other state government official.
Now, finally, don't let this happen to you. If you have government-required stickers on your car, please SCORE THEM WITH A RAZOR BLADE, AFTER THEY ARE APPLIED. Make it so your sticker can't be removed, without it coming off in useless pieces. Don't count on the government to give you something secure. Or better yet, if you can, have the sticker put on the inside of the rear window of your car.

 

That is a standard procedure here in Miami-Dade County on our tag renewal stickers. They remove the stickers for their own vehicles. If they can't use it, they won't take it. They will just move on to another vehicle that has not modified their sticker.

 

We used to have car inspections in Floriduh, both for safety and for pollution. They found out that the failure rate at the inspection stations was so low that there was really no point to it. The cost of running the program was enormous and they almost never had failures in safety or pollution. They got rid of the program and everyone is happy. Any police officer can do a roadside safety check. If he pulls you over and notices bald tires, or one headlight out or broken tail lights or a hole in your muffler, you get a ticket for that.

The inspection stickers went inside the front windshield and were hard to remove without a razor blade and usually fell apart. My registration sticker on my license plate always gets scored though. It is so soft that just using my thumbnail across it a few times is enough to score lines and make it fall apart on removal.

 

I would just go steal someone else's.

 

I was kidding though....