Just because tag 'abc-000' comes back matching a red ford f150 doesn't mean the owner of the vehicle is the driver.

I don't know what kind of ancient system you guys have, but where I live, running a tag gives you full name, address of registered owner, expiration of the tag, and the general information of the car.

Otherwise, it would be pretty easy to fake a valid registration and put any name and address you want on it if registration only contained the vin number and the car information, in fact, that's probably WHY they have the full information at hand.

And don't forget, if they want to give you red light tickets... well, they kind of need that information from the tag. Yeah.

so you must be the owner, right?

Uh, I'm pretty sure they are supposed to have a drivers license to hand you. Do a little investigation. Does the information on the drivers license match the vehicle registration information?

I can see it being an issue if it's another driver and then an accident occurs and the registration is missing, no worry, when a cop comes to investigate the accident he can... pull it up on his handy dandy computer.

You know what would be even cooler? If a driver is missing their registration paper, but the registration is valid, many cops have printers in the car to print up a ticket. Instead of wasting it on a missing registration ticket, print a replacement for the driver.

If you can query the vehicle database, you can place that information into a form to generate a fresh paper copy of the registration and hand it over to the driver.

No need for a driver to waste a whole day of their life going to court.

Computers are neat-o aren't they!

Also the yearly inspection and tags and registrations that is DOT not police. I mean god forbid they require a yearly inspection to make sure people are driving safe vehicles that aren't going to cause accidents, those monsters!

This may be shocking to you, but not all states require inspections. Some states had them in the past but they were notoriously corrupt, also generally they are useless.

They modify the car to pass inspection, get the sticker, then put the crap back on. Good waste of a ton of money for the vast majority of drivers.