Papercu;
NH DMV mentions MA doesn’t honor temp plates because there are so many people who venture South into MA from NH that they are, in effect, doing a kindness by pointing out that MA will not honor the plates.
Sadly, if the intent of the law was to make certain that people had insurance in MA when driving there from NH with temp plates, it’s a wonderfully (and typically) misguided law. I’ve had three temp plates in the last couple years – and each and every time I’ve made certain I was insured before putting the plate on the vehicle, because I try to be responsible and make certain that I won’t lose everything I’ve worked a lifetime to achieve in the event of an accident. Given the NH ‘option’ of having insurance, there’s nothing about having a real metal plate that would confirm the vehicle was insured.
The only thing I can logically think of in this case that would make a temp plate ‘different’ in the eyes of MA is that to obtain one, a title application must be in process for vehicles that require a title to receive a metal plate (if you already had a title at the time of registration, they would have provided a metal plate from the stock sequential numbers, or a temp plate in the event of application for a vanity plate until the metal ones arrived in the mail). Given the amount of auto theft in MA, this just might be the underlying reason for all this nonsense – at least in the eyes of the legislature, where logic and careful and complete thought are rare if not non-existent.
If anyone is curious as to why I’m so negative about DMV (and other) laws in MA it’s because I was born and raised there, and made good my escape 20 years ago. Sadly, over the last decade or so our State to the North has turned into the same legal cesspit in many areas because of a similar mindset of lawmakers and voters – many of whom fled North from MA after they had ruined their original State; it’s getting to be time to uproot and move again. Sigh.
