RMV to be down 1 more week

No inspections until April 17 due to cyber-attack

Vehicle inspections won’t be up and running again until next weekend at the earliest as a system crash continues to wreak havoc with motorists.

The Registry of Motor Vehicles announced late Friday night that a cyber-attack that knocked down a vendor on March 30 still isn’t resolved. The new start date is now April 17.

Applus Technologies, the Shrewsbury-based vendor behind vehicle inspections, was hit by a cyber-attack that knocked out the Registry of Motor Vehicles system in Massachusetts and other states, MassDOT said.

“The RMV will hold the vendor accountable for this disruption and is working with Applus to restore services as soon as possible. Applus has indicated that their systems will be operating by Saturday, April 17th in Massachusetts and the Registry will continue working with the vendor to meet this goal,” the state announcement stated.

The RMV is asking police chiefs and the State Police to help “mitigate the impacts of the outage.” Or, basically, ease up on tickets for late inspections.

That means approximately 15,000 motor vehicle inspections per day continue to be pushed back. That doesn’t count the 20,000-plus inspections usually conducted on the first two days of the month and the last two days of the month.

The RMV estimates that there are between 40,000 to 50,000 vehicles that may still have a March sticker and require an inspection once this hack is fixed.

The RMV said the “grace period” includes:

■ Motor vehicles with expired inspection stickers from March 2021, (a “3” sticker on windshield), should be granted until April 30, 2021, to obtain an inspection.

■ Vehicles newly purchased or registered on or after Tuesday, March 23, 2021, should be granted until April 30, 2021, to obtain an inspection. Newly purchased vehicles must typically be inspected within seven days of registration.

■ Customers who recently had a failed inspection and are in the 60-day free retest window will be afforded one extra day for each day Applus’s system remains unavailable but should plan to facilitate their inspection as soon as possible once the system is restored and stations are online.

For updates, the RMV says monitor the registry website.

STuarT CaHILL / HEraLd sTaFF FILE MORE WOES: The Registry of Motor Vehicles announced Friday that the disabled vehicle inspection system, which was the victim of a cyber-attack, will be down for another week, with a likely restart on April 17.