Little by little, cellphones are replacing our wallets. You can buy a coffee at Starbucks by flashing your phone under a scanner, or board a plane with a digital ticket. Is the day that far off when, instead of carrying a driver’s license, you’ll just hand a police officer your phone, displaying your megapixeled mugshot and address?
Reader Carlos Stecher of Woburn, for one, isn’t waiting for the future. He still carries a license, but instead of keeping his certificate of registration in the glove compartment, he carries a snapshot of it on his phone.
“I took a clear photo of my registration in case of accident or getting pulled over, and keep the physical copy in a safe,” Stecher recently wrote me. “This is the concern. One, your car gets stolen, and the thief gets pulled over. They produce the registration. Two, car gets broken into, thief finds the registration, and now has your personal information at their disposal.”
But are paperless registrations as good as the real thing? We tackle a few of your road-rules questions today, starting with this one.
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Nice try, but . . .
Officials from both the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the State Police told me that Stecher needs to take his registration out of his safe and put it back in his car.
“An ‘electronic’ picture of the certificate on the person’s phone or other device is only a facsimile of the certificate, not the actual certificate issued by the registrar,” said Registry spokeswoman Sara Lavoie.
For electronic versions of either a license or a registration to be legal, the Legislature would need to amend state law to specifically say electronic or digital copies are acceptable, and it hasn’t done that.
Were Stecher to show an officer a photo instead of his registration, he’d be cited for failing to produce one, a $40 fine, said David Procopio, State Police spokesman.
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Lavoie wasn’t convinced that Stecher would be better off with his registration on his phone, anyway, as a phone can also be lost or stolen.
John Sofis Scheft, an Arlington lawyer who instructs police on motor vehicle law, added that without a valid registration, an officer can order you out of your vehicle on the suspicion that it’s stolen.
Stopping short
What value does a stop line have, asks reader Gregory Green of Medway, when it’s placed so far back from an intersection that a driver’s view is blocked by trees or a fence?
“The perfect example of an obstructed intersection is in Medfield at Indian Hill Road and South Street. There are large shrubs to the right that obscure your vision of traffic coming from that direction,” Green wrote me.
Green contends that at least half the stop lines on his commute to East Walpole have similar problems.
“Who is in charge of [placing] the lines — do they actually check that you can see both ways, and when that is not the case, can the obstructions be removed by the town or state?” he asked.
In general, Massachusetts and other states adhere to pavement marking guidelines issued by the federal government. According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, stop lines can be painted as far back as 30 feet from the intersecting road.
Ken Feeney, Medfield’s superintendent of public works, says it’s often necessary to have vehicles stop that far in advance so that buses and trucks with wide turning radiuses won’t hit them when turning into a road.
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The manual also requires stop lines to be placed at least four feet behind any crosswalk. At the Indian Hill Road intersection, there’s a crosswalk, so the stop line automatically has to be farther back.
Michael Verseckes of MassDOT added that when the state paints stop lines at a signaled intersection, it makes sure they are far enough back so that drivers can look forward and see overhead signals.
“While we attempt to minimize physical obstructions to sight distance in our roadway reconstruction projects, there are often times where right-of-way restrictions or physical constraints make this impractical,” he said.
But naturally, no one wants drivers getting into accidents. If there’s an obstructed-view stop line in your community, a simple complaint to your town or city hall (or MassDOT if it’s on a state highway) will often yield results.
Medfield Police Chief Robert Meaney, who is charge of stop signs in his community, said residents can e-mail him with any safety concern.
“Usually if we have a complaint, I or the DPW will talk to the property owner: ‘Do you want to cut back that tree, or do you want us to do it for you?’ ” Meaney said.
Regardless, you still need to stop at the stop line, and if necessary, at the intersection. Failure to do so is a potential $150 fine.
“I have a lot of support from friends and, some police on this position,” Bob wrote me. “My lovely wife’s assumption is that . . . the red arrow has a special function in this case and it is wrong to proceed. She also has a lot of support. Please help.”
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I, too, have heard conflicting sentiments about red arrows, especially when the turn is at an odd angle to the adjoining road. But the Registry’s driver’s handbook seems pretty clear.
“A steady red arrow means the same as a steady red, circular signal,” the manual says. “The same rules for ‘turning on red’ apply.”
So Bob, right you are.
Peter DeMarco can be reached at peter.demarco@globe.com. His website is whotaughtyouto drive.com and on Facebook at “Who Taught You to Drive?”