Personal experience shows front plates help solve hit and runs | Opinion

By FloridaBicyclist

We were disappointed at the news last week that Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota has decided to drop the front-license plate requirement from the Lilly Glaubach bill that is moving through legislative committees.

The bill, which is aimed at making hit-and-run cases easier to solve, will require body shops to either accept a a police report or to submit a report to a database before repairing damaged cars. An amendment was added in the Agriculture, Environment, and General Government Appropriations Committee that required front license plates on all vehicles in Florida.

News of this requirement resulted in social media backlash and then Gruters announced on X that he was dropping the requirement.

(SB) 92, also known as the "Lilly Glaubach Act” included a two plate proposal as an additional solution to the hit and run epidemic that we are facing here in Florida. It was added in the last committee stop as an amendment however it will not be part of the final bill.

We are…

— Joe Gruters (@JoeGruters) March 25, 2025

As motorists, we don’t understand the backlash. The price of a new license plate and mounting kit is minimal and if you’re a law-abiding driver, it shouldn’t make any difference how many license plates your car has.

As cyclists, the change could be monumental. Many of us ride with cameras that record from the front and rear of our bikes. In the case that a cyclist is hit from the rear, a front license plate would likely be caught on camera.

Our editor lived in a state that required front plates, which there are 29 of, and has personal experience with a hit and run case that was solved thanks to a front license plate. Late one night a drunk driver hit his parked car and drove off. The impact was such, that the front license plate of the hit-and-run driver’s vehicle came off and was left at the crash scene.

Without that crucial bit of evidence, we don’t know if police could have tied the vehicle to the crash. But we do know that having a front license plate on that vehicle definitively placed the driver’s car at the scene and she faced charges for the crash.

In the grand scheme of things, a front license plate seems like such a small change that could have an enormous impact on solving hit and run cases.