How long can I keep my old licence plate? (Reston: apartments, insurance)

[Darksword]

Hey all,

I'll be moving to NOVA in two weeks and having my car shipped from Cali. I recently renewed my registration and it is good through July of 2009. Will I be able to drive in NOVA without getting ticketed as long as my registration is current, or do I have to get a VA licence plate right away?

Also... for those of you living in Herndon/Reston near the Dulles airport how bad is the airplane noise? I'm hesitant to look for apartments too close to Dulles because I don't want to have planes keeping me up late at night.

Thanks a bunch.

[Bye NJ]

Originally Posted by Darksword

Will I be able to drive in NOVA without getting ticketed as long as my registration is current, or do I have to get a VA licence plate right away?

Why would you want to keep a Cali plate?

[VRE332]

You should find out if turning in the California plate into the california DMV will get you any registration money back. There's been tons of posts on VA DMV and I think you have 30 days to get new VA tags, unless you are military personell

[not2creative]

You have 30 days to title and register your vehicle in Virginia.

Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles

[bungalowmo]

I guess legally you have 30 days. I was in the same situation 7 yrs ago. Just got my PA reg. & inspection. I left it til it ran out! (started getting new stuff about 1 mo. prior, actually) Never got stopped & had no issues with it.

[akorosdc]

Technically, 30 days, but I kept my PA stuff for a year until I moved to DC. It seems like a key factor would be to also keep your out-of-state drivers license. With that, you can always say that the car is primarily garaged in California. I never had any issues.

[dkf747]

I was going to answer the question that you can keep the plates as long as you want. You still need to get Va. plates within 30 days. I have plates, from the various states I have lived in, going back more than 20 years.

[slduvall]

I would as one poster said check for a refund for CA but I would also price the insurance. You most likely need VA tags to take advantage of lower prices. Not sure, but it makes sense.

On keeping the tags till they run out, you won't get pulled over for having out of state tages, there are just too many for them to do that, but IF you get pulled over for something else, it will become an issue, and we have some pretty big fines here, just check out the reckless driving posts here. If you went to court to contest it, you won't stand a chance with having "broken" the law regarding the 30 days. Something to think about.

[akorosdc]

Originally Posted by slduvall

I would as one poster said check for a refund for CA but I would also price the insurance. You most likely need VA tags to take advantage of lower prices. Not sure, but it makes sense.

On keeping the tags till they run out, you won't get pulled over for having out of state tages, there are just too many for them to do that, but IF you get pulled over for something else, it will become an issue.

Ask your company how they price it if it's garaged in Virginia > 6 months out of the year. I did that for school and paid VA insurance rates for a PA-registered car (Geico). They priced it off of where the car is the most, not where my legal residence was.

As for getting caught, if you can keep your California driver's license it should be ok (it's hard to prove that the car isn't here temporarily). If you can't keep your license, then you may have a problem...