Vehicle Registration

This week is full of the administrivia of relocation so the blog will be bureaucratic to match. I am usually good at finding answers on the web, but some of these procedures were difficult to get good information about so I am writing this up in hopes others will find it useful.
Generally speaking, Honolulu has excellent web resources for Hawaii state procedures for citizens but Kauai, not so much.

We shipped a car from the mainland to Kauai earlier this month and today we registered it with the state of Hawaii. You have thirty days to do this -- I don't know what the penalty is, but you should just do it.

Insurance note: you may have to change insurance agents moving here. Our insurance company does not insure here so we had to switch companies. It's probably best to have the new coverage before registering the car.

Here's the process in a nutshell, then some details. (If you buy a car on the island the dealer should take care of registration: the following is for registering your own car shipped over from the mainland.)

1. Get the necessary paperwork from the shipper
2. Get insurance if necessary (our insurance company would not cover the car in Hawaii)
3. Go get a "failed" safety inspection
4. Go to the vehicle registration office
5. Go back to the safety inspection place

Step 1. When your car arrives on Kauai and you pick it up the shipper will give you a Bill of Lading and a receipt showing the date the car arrived - you will need both of these to register the car within thirty days.

Step 2. Find a gas station or auto service shop that does Hawaii state vehicle safety inspections (call ahead, some require appointments). Show them the registration and proof of insurance. Pay about $20 and they give you a "failed" inspection slip to take to get the car registered: you will have to bring that back to them later on.

You will see "Safety Inspection" signs displayed at such places. If you want to do the whole process in one day, a shop near the Lihue Civic Center is convenient as you need to go twice. You may want to use a shop near where you will be living as your regular repair service. If it is far from Lihue you can do this in two steps on separate days, but you must complete Step 4 within fifteen days of Step 2.

Step 3. Take all those documents (existing out-of-state registration, proof of insurance, "failed" inspection) as well as the vehicle title and a checkbook to the vehicle licensing office and get in line.

Kauai vehicle licensing office is in the Lihue Civic Center (4444 Rice St., Lihue, HI). There are two large buildings with various government offices, but no handy map so it's hard to find the place except by asking or trial and error. The office is on the north side of the building closest to the highway, accessed from doors between the two large buildings that comprise the civic center. GPS coordinates
21° 58.578', -159° 22.152'.

The very kind lady at the counter took everything and filled out forms and I wrote a small check and she handed us new Hawaii plates with tabs, a new vehicle title, and a new vehicle registration. The registration and proof of insurance go in the car; the title in a separate place, not in the car.

Step 4. Back at the safety inspection shop, hand them the "failed" slip along with the new registration and proof of insurance. They do their thing and give you a safety inspection sticker good for one year. You also get a document for the inspection as well that you will need to provide to an officer if stopped, so that goes along with the registration and insurance papers. They also removed our old license plates and put on the new ones (though I don't think they have to, but it helped us out because our tools are in transit with the move just now).

We drove away with shiny new Hawaii license plates. Since we had just renewed our old registration, we did not have to pay the state of Hawaii registration until that registration expires, though we did pay a fee for the change. This does have an unusual result: the safety inspection is good for one year, but the license renewal is due in about ten months. For simplicity at renewal we will probably just get the next safety inspection early so it matches the registration one year cycle. The state sends a reminder to renew registration but not the safety inspection so if they expire at different times you are on your own.

It sounds complicated and it was the first time, but we did Steps 2 and 3 and 4 all in less than an hour (using a shop just a couple miles away from the Civic Center). Everybody from the shipper to auto shop to registration lady were very helpful and patient which made it all go smoothly. Mahalo!