How to Protect Your License Plate Sticker
There are plenty of strategies to help protect your vehicle from thieves. You can invest in alarm systems and park smartly in well-lit areas or parking garages. Hiding your valuables in under-floor storage, in the center console, or in the cargo area are smart ways to keep your important items concealed. You know to lock your doors whenever your car is parked, but there’s one tip you might not have tried in making sure your vehicle is safe — scoring your license plate sticker with a razor.
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This tip, suggested by Family Handyman writer Alex Shoemaker, helps secure an expensive and necessary accessory on your vehicle. A lack of a vehicle registration tag leaves you subject to a ticket and having to pay for a potential ticket and a replacement are frustrating expenses you will want to avoid.
“By ‘scoring’ the sticker, the tag will be more difficult to rip off. Instead, it will tear into multiple pieces, rendering it unusable. This trick won’t keep thieves from removing the sticker. But if they do, they can’t use it on their vehicle,” according to Shoemaker. “That alone might be enough of a deterrent to keep your sticker safe.”
The scoring trick only applies to single-layered stickers. If you’ve been putting stickers on top of each other, you’ll need to remove the outdated ones. Then you’ll need to remove any residual adhesive with a thorough cleaning job. Apply the new sticker. Make sure there are no air bubbles and the sticker lays completely flat on your plate. You can use a sharp tool like a box cutter to etch an X pattern onto the new sticker.
“Other patterns will work as well, but this is the most effective,” adds Shoemaker.
License plate security screws can help thwart thieves from removing your license plate from your vehicle. The screws cannot be removed without a security wrench.
DeAnn Owens is a Dayton transplant by way of the Windy City, yet considers herself to be a California girl at heart even though she’s only visited there once. To get through the dreaded allergy season unique to the Miami Valley, she reads, writes, complains about the weather, and enjoys spending time with her husband, two sons, and their newest addition, a Boston terrier puppy that is now in charge of all their lives. In the future, she hopes to write a novel and travel through time. See more articles by DeAnn.