What the hell is he doing?
Police will not be happy having the state force them to spend millions on the equipment needed to read such devices.
What about all of the out-of-state vehicles? Lots of potential false alarms. Won't this get confusing for the police?
This is a very bad idea. Loss of privacy, lots of personal exposure. I'll risk the uninsured motorists any day over the well-intentioned snoops in government.
In states without these rackets, I don't see uninspected vehicles exploding, running off the road, tossing axles or whatnot. It's like in Oregon, where they don't let you pump your own gas - in other states, there's no rash of exploding gas stations because of dumb gas-pumpin' people.
Many politicians can't stand it if they can't keep track of people. Since 9/11 they see an opportunity to keep track of people. So I guess the insurance industry is trying to capitalize on the prevailing feeling. 26% uninsured means a lot of $$$ they could have in premiums that they're not getting.
An RFID can't be read from very far, especially if it is mounted on a metal license plate and is the size of registration sticker. Just a few meters.
It will prevent a lot of illegals from driving, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
TXDOT news ping. I heard a blip about this yesterday, and finally found an article on the subject.
Bullshi'ite. Cops today don't properly enforce the tags. A bar code and over-the-counter scanner would be more than sufficient. The only RF devices that go on my truck are placed there by me (toll tags, GPS etc).