40k vehicles on Oahu roads have expired registration

HONOLULU (KHON2) — The City and County of Honolulu revealed there are 40,457 vehicles with expired registration on Oahu and 73% of those, or 29,618 vehicles, have not been registered in the last five years.

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“That’s a lot of vehicles,” said Bill Powers, City and County of Honolulu Dept. of Customer Services Information Specialist. “Almost 30,000 cars are driving on our highways in the last five years without being registered.”

He said it’s a significant number and they’re reminding folks to get their cars registered because those fees include road maintenance taxes.

“We’ve driven around places where we have potholes on our streets and our highways that we don’t have the funds to get to them all because we have so many vehicles that haven’t re-registered and their registration is due,” he explained.

“We do get quite a few vehicles coming in that are expired,” explained Won Pak, owner and partner at Punahou Auto Service. “Some are two, three years old, but the average is usually three to six months.”

He said a lot of people are on a tight budget and some wait a year or two to try and get their registration renewed.

“The longer you wait, every year it adds up,” Pak said. “We do have customers who don’t have the money to pay for it, so I mean we can’t give them a sticker unless it’s all legit and current.”

He said they do about 10 to 15 safety checks a day, and sometimes half of them fail due to not having up-to-date registration.

He said some vehicles on the road will have an updated safety sticker but an out-of-date registration sticker, but they could still be driving legally. “There are people stealing the stickers either the registration sticker or the safety sticker, they’ll peel it off and some people are afraid of that so they’ll leave the sticker on the registration paper, and they won’t put it on the car,” Pak said.

“Some customers will razor cut the stickers so they’ll see that and when they try to peel it, it will fall apart so they usually leave it alone and they go for the cars not cut like that,” he added.

The city’s Motor Vehicle Registration Branch sends renewal notices 45 days before their registration expires.

“If your vehicle is not registered, it means you are driving illegally and could be penalized,” said Kim Hashiro, director of the city’s Department of Customer Services.

Late registrations carry a $16 penalty for passenger vehicles. The penalty is $40 for commercial vehicles.

Residents have four ways to renew a vehicle registration; including the DMV Now self-service kiosks at select Safeway and Foodland stores, online, in-person, or at a satellite city hall, or by mail.

A vehicle must have a current Hawaii safety inspection before it can be registered.

To renew the registration of a vehicle that is more than a year overdue, taxes and fees for past years must be paid. Appeals of past taxes and fees must be done through the First Circuit District Court of Oʻahu.

For more information on motor vehicle registration services in the City and County of Honolulu, visit the CSD’s website.