Retired LEO pointed out that the inspection sticker on the rental car I was driving had expired 41 days ago. He added that officers working traffic would issue me a citation even though it is a rent car. He should know, his wife had just retired after 32 years on the bench.
The car rental company insisted that they are given certain latitude in cases like this.
Is that so after 41 days passed expiration? I have a feeling I would have a ticket to pay without reimbursement from the rental agency in any case.

Guessing this wasn't in TX like your profile says?
Since we've gone to a single sticker now & inspection is tied to the registration.

Edit: Unless you meant expired registration.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: P250UA5,

Send an email to CEO of rental company. Go from there

Yes, I’m in Texas and have just turned the car in without incident. It would be nice to know how LEOs deal with expired stickers on rental cars just in case the last available car on the lot is way past the 4 or 5 day grace period. The assurances of some clerk at the rental agency may not be enough to protect me from a revenue enhancement minded traffic cop.

Travel a lot so it's something I check and typically refuse - although the 2 times it happened to me the actual tags were expired by a couple days.

I don’t have a clear answer for you. But it also happened to me a few months ago. Was meeting my wife In Asheville NC and since she already had her car there I got a one-way rental. 6 hour drive and when I went to turn it in noticed the tag was expired by 2 months. The guy at the desk was not happy and apologized. Not sure what would have happened if I had received a citation.
Bottom line, I put that in my cross-check now when I rent a car. Always check it! It was Enterprise that I rented from.
Maybe one of the LE folks can give us a good answer.

Speaking only for me, I would not write anyone for this, as long as all the other paperwork was ok. Most people when renting dont even look at the registration when they pick up the car and the rental companies DGAF about letting customers rent them out with expired documents.
I was never that desperate for a pinch.

Rent with Mississippi plates. We eliminated safety inspection stickers several years back.

Slight thread drift. If renting in Colorado, check the rental for leftover weed. People driving into Nebraska have found this out the hard way.

When I was a cop, I never wrote for an expired tag that wasn’t six months out or more....

Inspections, I treated them the same way, but we couldn’t see the inspection info unless you ran the tag because they did away with the inspection sticker thing to save money a decade ago....

If i had stopped you for something and found out your rental car was a few days out of inspection, I’ve got enough sense to know you are not the guy who deals with the registration cause it’s a rental...nor would I write you for it...even if you were a dick

It belongs to the rental company, not the DRIVER.

These companies are usually large corporations with offices and cars flung all over the place.

Any LEO ticketing a driver for this should be ashamed of himself. On the job this would be the very definition of a "chicken shit violation".

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:

Speaking only for me, I would not write anyone for this, as long as all the other paperwork was ok. Most people when renting dont even look at the registration when they pick up the car and the rental companies DGAF about letting customers rent them out with expired documents. I was never that desperate for a pinch.

25 years ago (more or less) I was teaching a course in a suburb just north of Chicago. I had flown in and landed the V-Tail at Palwaukee airport, rented a Hertz car there. Had dinner at a restaurant, pulled out of the parking lot and had not gone 100 yards when a cop lit me up from behind.

WTF? I definitely was not speeding, had just exited the parking lot, had not blown a stop sign nor a traffic light, could not figure out why he stopped me. Ah, a burned out tail lamp. He started writing, I said "I hope you're writing that ticket to Hertz."

"Hertz isn't driving, you are," said he.

I signed for the ticket, stuck it in my pocket, then politely asked him to call his supervisor to the scene before he left. One of his lights was out. He gave me a look that clearly said "up yours," and drove off. I did not follow up, but I should have.

When I returned the car to Hertz, I told them to deduct the amount of the mail-in fine from the rental charge, which they did, and I paid the fine.

I have given countless citations during my career, and many of those were for expired inspection and registration. However, I don’t think I would have ever given one to a driver of a rental car.

I took my grandmother’s car to go pick up my niece at school back when I was a teenager, and I got stopped for an expired inspection sticker. I got cited even after explaining that I only used the car since it was parked behind mine in the driveway.

That officer gave the usual response that I’m responsible for all of the regulations while operating a vehicle, and that my signature on my DL was my contract to that fact.

I would use a similar speech during my years, but even so, a renter would get a break for obvious reasons.

Chicken shit cop (Barney Fife comes to mind) that would write a customer up for that.

quote:

He added that officers working traffic would issue me a citation even though it is a rent car.

Isn't there real crime happening somewhere?

About 10-15 years ago I was pulled over in Shillington, PA (near Reading) for expired inspection sticker on a rental. Cop looked at the paperwork (verified I was actually renting, I suppose), and let me go.

Can't argue with him pulling me over, and I can't argue about the outcome either.

Clearly none of you guys are from NJ. They do some crazy shit there when they see an expired inspection sticker. (I lived in NJ until I was 21).

I don’t know a cop down here that would ever issue a citation for an expired inspection ON A RENTAL CAR. That’s entirely out of the control of the renter, and thus, not their fault, and ANY cop that issues such citation should retire immediately. That’s a horse shit citation and indefensible. I’ve pulled over plenty of rental cars and if it was a problem on the registration or a brake light out, I sure as shit didn’t cite the renter for that.

I used to work at a major rental car company in the early 2000s, its a pain to get the registration to catch up to the car. They get rented, usually people on both sides of the counter don't notice. That rental car company (and I assume most others) calculate their location profit by occupancy, they want every car on the road, not sitting in the parking lot not earning $. As such, there are usually shortages of cars and whats the odds 1) anyone would notice, 2) anyone would get stopped for it, 3) anyone would get a ticket for it. No CEO or even manager or regional manager would care if you emailed about it, worst thing is you could give them a bad customer satisfaction review afterwards, which is usually another metric of location success, but $$$ is most important.

It would be very unfortunate if you were running hookers, blow, or just plain drunk in a rental car with expired tags and that was the pretext for stopping you though.

You should of told him you were a sovereign citizen.