Josh Byrnes
A license plate would no longer be required on the front of “vintage” vehicles and two-seat, low-profile sports cars, like Corvettes, in Iowa under legislation that passed the Iowa House Monday night.
Represenative Josh Byrnes of Osage says vehicle collecting is a popular hobby in Iowa.
“You can talk to your auto body repair folks…or you can talk about the big event they have up in St. Paul in which we get all these, probably, thousands of collector vehicles driving through the state of Iowa,” Byrnes says, “so I think this is a good bill and we worked on some compromise here.”
The bill as originally written would have removed the front license plate requirement for all vehicles on Iowa roads. The scaled back proposal now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Representative Clel Baudler, a Republican from Greenfield, is a retired state trooper. He says all vehicles should have plates on the front and the back, to help law enforcement track down criminals.
“We have out there Amber Alerts,” he says. “We have new computer equipment that an officer with a car equipped with that can drive around parking lots, motels, even meeting people on streets and it will show up immediately wants and warrants.”
Some school buses are also equipped with video cameras which record the front license plates of drivers who do not stop when the bus is stopped as children board and get off the bus.