License plates for dirtbike, can you place them on your bookbag? (live, legal)

[willc86]

Hey all, so I have a street legal dirtbike, planning to get another one. Ive seen a few people with their plates on their bookbags in Colorado. I thought it was genius since plates usually end up getting ripped off or something when we take a fall.

any ideas?

[NW Crow]

When in doubt, I'd generally recommend talking to the officials in charge. A lot of questions here should be referred to government officials. In this case I might go with State Patrol or Vehicle Licensing. Might get the run around but they should work to connect you with the right person, right answer.


I'd think the official answer would be needs to affixed physically to the bike. If a field officer made an issue of it, it might just result in instruction / warning about that is just a guess.

[Ttark]

I've never heard of anybody putting their number plate on their backpack. I've also never heard of that being legal anywhere (then again, people who register their cars in two different states sometimes put their secondary plates in the windshield. I've seen it.)

Be safe, not sorry, and just mount it to the bike like everybody else does.

[AirborneVespa]

I used to do that when I lived in DC. No it isn't legal, but I was never hassled about it. People do it because stealing plates (esp Motorcycle plates) is a thriving business since stealing motorcycles is relatively easy.

On the other hand some people do it to look cool.

As someone else stated at best you'd get a talking to and be told to attach it to your bike.

Hint: Attach velcro to the plate area and the back of the plate. Remove the plate if you leave the bike in a public area and are worried about theft of the plate.

[Workerdrone]

Or just carry some zip ties or screws and driver so if you are pulled over and the officer insists on the plate being attached you can do it right then

[Ttark]

Or OP could just avoid unnecessary legal hassles and risk of damage to his driving record altogether and just mount it up on the bike like everybody else is expected to do.

I like the velcro idea. If you have a couple of neodymium magnets (old hard drives are an easy source of these; look behind where the tone arm pivot is, they're usually inside a mu-metal shield) and there's a ferromagnetic surface under the mount area (hint: get a couple U-bolts and epoxy the steel flat brackets to it; $3 at any decent hardware store) he could glue or Gorilla Tape the magnets to the back of the plate and attach it to the bike that way. Less chance of it falling off than with velcro. If you do this, don't carry the plate in your backpack if you also have tapes, hard drives or floppies in there, unless you have a shielded box for them or you keep them a safe distance apart.