Illinois, This Small, Basic Thing On Your Car Is A $1,000 Fine

Illinois has a really strict law when it comes to what you can and can't put on your car.

We've already talked about Illinois possibly relaxing the frequency of cracking down on speeders. That includes not pulling people over as much for things like dark tinted windows, an expired registration sticker, no plates or stickers, excessive exhaust, or more violations.

But there's one Illinois law that isn't going to allow a certain feature on your car.

Don't Put This On Your Car

A lot of us like to (or at least try to) keep our cars clean. After nasty weather, we take them through the car wash, we try to vacuum them out, and just keep them as nice as we can.

Cars are also fun to personalize with things like bumper stickers and license plate frames, but if you live in Illinois, you'll need to be careful with that last one.

Illinois law does not allow license plate covers.

Yahoo says that you can be fined $750 if it's obstructive and $1,000 if it's reflective. Think about it: Illinois has a lot of tollways and what are they supposed to do if your license plate cover reflects your plates so the cameras can't make it out? You may not even have intended to make it reflective or with obstructive material.

Newsnation reports that that exact problem is costing other cities millions of dollars.

Illinois law specifically says:

A person may not operate any motor vehicle that is equipped with registration plate or digital registration plate covers....A fine of $1,000 shall be imposed where a plate has been physically altered with any chemical or reflective substance or coating that obstructs the visibility or electronic image recording of the plate.

Obviously, the benefit of license plate covers is to keep the weather and ick off of the plate and sticker. As for license plate frames, those are fine, according to Way, but they can't obstruct the info on the plate either.