A car without a license plate near Downtown Beirut. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — In the face of Lebanon's ongoing economic crisis, a phenomenon is on the rise on the country's roads: cars and motorbikes without license plates.
There are several factors behind this dangerous trend, which authorities are having a hard time curbing, experts tell L'Orient Today.
A security source said this phenomenon is due to the vehicle registration centers across Lebanon being closed for months.
This widespread closure of these centers started in 2022, after a "mass arrest" of employees on corruption charges.
"The problem occurs because of the issue at the vehicle registration centers, which is being resolved. We are doing as much as we can by placing checkpoints to combat the phenomenon," the security source said.
A car without a licence plate on a street in Beirut's southern suburb. (Credit: Wael Taleb)
Some of the dozens of arrested vehicle registration center employees were later released, but work at the Nafaa remained suspended. The centers re-opened in April but experienced long queues as people sought to process driving related paperwork.
Last week, the vehicle registration center in Dekwaneh announced that it would start accepting appointments online through its website in an attempt to curtail queue lengths at the centers.
'Chaotic situation'
"This phenomenon [of driving unregistered vehicles] is very dangerous, both for safety and security. We have been following this matter for a long time without any result, unfortunately," Ziad Akl, the founder of YASA for Road Safety — an NGO promoting road safety and injury prevention — told L'Orient Today.
"The danger is that security forces are unable to enforce the driving law, which is an ongoing problem that has been there for a long time but which is on the rise lately," Akl said. "For example, in the case of an accident, if the driver runs away, you wouldn't know how to find them. This is a chaotic situation," Akl added. With registered cars, the plate number can be used to locate the car owner.
Among motorists driving without car plates, some want to evade the law in relation to traffic violations. Among those, is Ali* from the Yammouneh village in Baalbeck.
He told L'Orient Today that he drives his car without a license plate because he usually speeds but does not want to get speeding tickets. Ali said that there haven't been any checkpoints in his area, leaving him free to move around unbothered.
'What was I supposed to do? Not drive my cars?'
Another driver, Jaafar*, also from Baalbeck, told L'Orient Today that he has four cars: two without license plates, one with a foreign plate and one with licence plates that are not registered in his name, which is illegal.
"Before the Nafaa closed, I didn't register them [the cars], out of procrastination, but after the centers closed, what was I supposed to do? Not drive my cars?" Jaafar asked.
He explained that he drives three of his cars only in Baalbeck to avoid running into checkpoints. "I know where the checkpoints are in my area, and even the Lebanese Army checkpoints wouldn't ask questions," Jaafar said. He only uses the car with license plates for trips outside of Baalbeck.
Jaafar recalls that, before the economic crisis, registration fees were very expensive.
As public administration bodies charge for things like registration at the official rate of LL15,000 to the US dollar (far below the current LL93,000 parallel market rate), paperwork is less expensive for those with a dollarized income.
Another factor that might explain the rising phenomenon of plateless cars is the deteriorating working and living conditions of security forces personnel due to the economic crisis.
Accidents and insurances
Human rights lawyer Ayman Raad told L'Orient Today that one of the factors that affect the security forces' ability and motivation to counter this phenomenon and other crimes is the "drop in salaries and in the logistics that the state is providing."
"If there is a police station that has five cars, for example, four of them would be dysfunctional," Raad said. "The result is a rise in theft and crimes because [plateless] cars are not registered," he said, pointing out that those driving these cars cannot be easily tracked.
Plateless cars also pose a serious problem in the event of a car accident involving one or more such vehicles.
"You can't subscribe to car insurance without your vehicle being registered," Raad explained. "So if it is not insured, the vehicle has no responsibility [in the case of an accident], which leads to complications in terms of insurance and tracking crime," Raad added.
The lawyer indicated that the legal punishment for stealing a car is worse than a normal theft because lawmakers assume that, in many cases, stealing a car is a means to commit another crime. "They [thieves] would steal a car to rob a house, or kidnap someone, or prepare a car bomb," Raad said.
He fears that plateless cars could be a way to "facilitate crimes."
* The first names have been anonymized for security reasons.