Aiming at helping catch toll evaders and other lawbreakers, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 516 by Assembly Speaker pro tem Kevin Mullin, D-San Francisco, this week after getting approved by the Legislature last month. The bill states that it requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to develop a system by 2019 to allow dealers to electronically report the sale of a vehicle.

"The impetus behind the bill came from a fatal hit and run accident, in southern California in 2013," the assemblyman's website states. "The vehicle involved was caught on video surveillance and has yet to be found and the case left unsolved because there were paper dealer plates on the vehicle."

It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of vehicles driving on California roadways without license plates on any given day, Mullin says the bill will help "modernize" California's current system by assigning the temporary plates at the point of sale before a vehicle drives off the lot.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which oversees Bay Area regional transportation planning and financing, supported the bill and estimates that California's Bay Area loses roughly $9 million annually in uncollected tolls, while toll roads and express lanes in Southern California lose about $10 million per year.