SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is seeing fewer vehicles registrations, Monte Roberts, Director of the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV), said.
In Sept. the DMV stopped sending out registration renewal postcards and instead asked people to sign up for reminders online.
“It really boiled down to economics. Because of Covid, we were asked to make some budget cuts,” Roberts said.
Department leaders felt that they could remind people to register through email at no cost, instead of having to cut DMV employees, he said.
Now, a few months later the department believes stopping postcards is leading to fewer registrations. There are other factors at play such as Covid-19 and fewer people driving, Roberts said.
The DMV is hoping to encourage people to sign up for registration reminders and to make sure their tags are not expired.
People are required to get an emissions test in order to register their vehicles for the first in Utah. To see often a car needs to be tested, click here.
Big-O Tires in Downtown Salt Lake City does several emissions test each day, but the manager says they been doing fewer these last few months.
“What we’ve seen a decrease in is people recognizing that they need to have it done, because people forget about it,” Robbie Carter said.
People seemed to be forgetting, he said. Team members at Big-O Tires are reminding people their tags are expired more than ever before, Carter said.
“We are finding more and more where customers will come in for their services and then we put their license plate information in for their warranties and we find its [the car’s registration] been expired, so we recommend a lot more than we ever used to,” he said.
Registration fees go to the Transportation fund.
For more information on how to register your vehicle, click here. To sign up for reminders, click here
