SACRAMENTO — The novel digital electronic license plate bill, SB 1453, authored by state Sen. Curren D. Price Jr. (D-Culver City), sailed through the Assembly Transportation Committee yesterday with bipartisan support, 8 to 0.
The bill would give the Dept. of Motor Vehicles the authority to investigate the emerging Digital Electronic License Plate (DELP) technology to explore its functionality, safety and administrative applications.
The legislation, which also received a unanimous vote of support in the Senate last month, has attracted widespread attention from media outlets across the nation and internationally, including Great Britain and Australia.
“This legislation provides a unique opportunity for California to work in partnership with some of the state’s most innovative enterprises to rethink how we can use our most basic assets to achieve greater efficiencies and cost savings, while generating new revenues for the state,” said Sen. Price. The bill authorizes the DMV to partner with innovation companies for the purpose of researching, developing, and implementing new technology at no additional costs to the DMV or state.
It directs the DMV to submit an interim and final report to the Legislature on the utilization of digital electronic license plates with specified areas of discussion and to conduct real world trials to gather data on the ability for DELP technology to deliver cost savings, workflow efficiencies and revenue generation. “State governments are facing unprecedented budget shortfalls, and they are actively rethinking the use of existing state assets to create new ongoing revenue opportunities,” said Sen. Price. Adoption of this emerging technology could potentially bring significant benefits to California and its taxpayers by realizing significant cost savings by using digital electronic license plate technology to streamline distribution, activation, and registration of license plates.
Sen. Price also said that with this new technology, critical real-time traffic and public safety information such as Amber Alerts and emergency traffic updates can be broadcast to the plates during exigent situations. “Finally,” he said, “having digital electronic license plate technology developed and engineered in California, would also create new jobs in technology, sales/marketing and service fields. These jobs could employ people having a broad range of educational and vocational skill levels.”
