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A relative had an immigrant colleague that was intrigued by different US license plates.
One day their manager had one that had a new colour scheme that he never saw before.
The intrigue overtook him and in a big group he had to ask how he got this new beautiful plate. And how could he get one themself?
Turns out the state required you to “wear” this license plate after your third DUI or something.
Oops.
Edit: looks like two states have these “whiskey plates” or “party plates”: https://www.tmj4.com/news/project-drive-sober/ohio-gets-toug...
> Turns out the state required you to “wear” this license plate after your third DUI or something.
This doesn't make much sense because the license plate is attached to the car, not the driver. Couldn't the manager just drive his wife's or friend's car or something? What purpose does the plate serve? "Warning everyone! A serial drink driver might be in this car, but might not be, and if he's in it he might be driving, or might not!" Totally useless. As someone else mentioned, wouldn't it make more sense to permanently revoke someone's license after 3 DUIs?
I'm curious what others think of this? My own thoughts, is that after one DUI you should just not get any plates at all. Period.
It seems almost darkly comical that there would be a second and then a third time, and that the punishment would be an altered plate color?? Why not just put local graffiti artists to work, and give them a free pass to keep the offenders car in a constant state of "DUI" in scarlet letters.
I hired someone on Craigslist for something (I don't remember now exactly what it was for) and he turned out to have a breathalyzer interlock on his car, presumably ordered by a judge or something after multiple DUIs. If I remember correctly, he had to periodically blow into the tube while driving. I don't think I had realized that was a thing before that.
I wish we had something like this in the UK.
More than 6 points on your licence and you have to drive a yellow car with a 1l engine or smaller.
That's interesting. Ohio's party plates are similar to Oregon's old yellow plates (which are still used for some niches, including official vehicles). The red font is different, but some of those party plates have very dark red numbers.
So, did he end up getting the plate?
that's so ... american. the vehicle version of public mugshots or perpwalk
I'm concerned with the "in Ohio, first time OWI offenders are required to stay in jail 3 days"...
Like, post-conviction? Or are they punishing before conviction here? It's sort of fucked, considering that there are several medical conditions commonly mistaken for drunk driving.
Didn't see mention of Delaware's (in)famous black plates:
> Delaware is the only state that allows private manufacture of plates for legal registration purposes, and the only state to have retained the famed porcelain plates in the modern era.
> Delaware ... remains the only state with non-standard size plates in current use.
https://www.dmv.de.gov/About/history/index.shtml
Peek into the insanity:
https://www.lowdigittags.com/29.html
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2022/10/28/d...
https://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/2019/06/10/delaware-i...
NC has a weird plate law.
> Any motor vehicle of the age of 35 years or more from the date of manufacture may bear the license plates of the year of manufacture instead of the current registration plates, if the current registration plates are maintained within the vehicle and produced upon the request of any person.
This means that you are issued regular plates and must carry them in the car, but can display a year of manufacture plate as the only plate on the car which is not registered with the state at all. Good luck getting a parking ticket or toll-by-plate.
I work in automotive. It's annoying dealing with US to Europe plates. I'm sure there is someone in the design dept that really wanted to deal with Delware plates and now just drinks.
Northwest Territories wins best plate every time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...
If you see a car with those plates in 'the south' (ie where 90+% of the country's population lives), you can presume that a car has physically travelled thousands of kilometres across a vast, nearly unpopulated wilderness to get to where you are. People who live in remote areas seem like hardy people; seeing that someone drove that far proves that they're a hardy person.*
*Of course, the effect is greatly reduced if you see a tourist sample plate that someone bought, with all zeros. That just means the person's been there. Far more impressive if the car's been there.
On a long road trip last year, we logged all the plates we noticed. That included all 50 states plus Guam, Puerto Rico, federal government, and diplomatic plates. The article missed those not issued by states. What we didn't expect, and what the article also misses, is that we saw several distinct plate designs issued by Native Americans. We saw them in multiple states, but more in Oklahoma than anywhere else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...
Finally a reason for a custom plate:
The explosion of full color images on special plates has also created some concerns for law enforcement’s use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), which automatically scan the plates of cars as they drive down the road or through tolls. Many police cars are equipped with ALPRs that scoop up all of the plates that drive by. A report by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators warned that high contrast backgrounds in these special plates can cause readability issues for ALPRs.
Don't forget the Diplomatic plates
https://diplomacy.state.gov/items/diplomatic-license-plates/ https://i.etsystatic.com/12654735/r/il/dd7fb3/1754142363/il_...
Or Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana, and the Virgin Islands
Or the Native American Nations
Not sure if it's still this way but it used to be that in Georgia if you got the "save wild dolphins" plate, the first two letters of your plate would be 'EE' which is hilarious. (It's supposed to sound like the noise dolphins make)
Ah so this is the plates not the numbers. Just for moment I was kind of confused...
I've always been surprised that there are so many licence plate number formats in use across the US. And some of the plate designs are pretty elaborate: I wonder to what extent they affect readability at a distance?
> Yes, license plates are still made by cheap prison labor in most states. 80% of all license plates issued in the U.S. today were made by state prisoners, with only 12 states opting out of the practice. According to a 2022 ACLU report on prison labor in the U.S., many states offer no pay at all to prisoners, while the average hourly wage across the country was between 13 and 52 cents per hour
So slavery's not dead, I guess.
I searched for Wisconsin in the table and found that Maryland and Pennsylvania have University of Wisconsin alumni plates, which I found odd.
Too bad the plate cost data wasn't presented. Was wondering which was the most expensive.
In Oregon the cost varies pretty wildly, and some don't have a renewal surcharge.
Do they do NPR, number plate recognition, in the US. There is a lot of it in the UK, in fact I think average speed checks are based on them. I would have thought it would be hard with all that decoration.
I recently saw a car with an antique license plate on it.
It was a model that was popular among my high school classmates.
Time is a bitch, man.
Tangential story time on how I "accidentally" got out of numerous parking tickets that would have prevented me from graduating university.
I went to school in a state that required both rear and front license plates. My car, however, was registered in my home state...one that only required a rear license plate. So, I affixed a vanity plate to the front of my Jeep.
Our University also had some requirement that you pay all parking tickets in order to be eligible to walk at graduation.
Well I found out pretty quickly that the parking authority mainly only checked the front license plate when writing parking tickets. And as it turns out, I was fortunate enough to receive three (3) parking tickets my senior year, ALL ticketed against the front vanity plate (two for exceeding time limits, one for parking in reserved parking that ironically my actual plate granted me access to). They never recorded my actual, rear license plate. Never recorded my VIN. Just the front vanity plate.
Some 10+ years later, to this day, if anyone in North Carolina has a legitimate Colorado license plate with the tag "VAIL" on it...well, my bad...hope you aren't trying to graduate!
EDIT: turns out, NC does NOT require front plates...so maybe the parking authority people were just cutting me slack. Or lazy. Probably lazy. Either way, I appreciate it!
Oohh, a lot of states have really cool plates for amateur radio operators! Check out Alabama's[0] -- radio symbol and even morse code "dits" and "dahs" -- seems they forgot to change the morse code to something generic since they say "AL2C" at the top, which is Alabama Bicentennial Amateur Radio Club's callsign, and ARL50 at the bottom, which I just found out apparently means "greetings from amateur radio"[1])
[0] https://www.revenue.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2...
> There were 50 possible plates to see (plus D.C.)
50 states, plus DC, plus Canadian provinces. Je me souviens. Tu ne te souviens pas?
The geekiest book I own (according to my wife) is “Registration Plates of the World” by Neil Parker [1] - there’s an older version on the IA [2].
Respect to the collectors club - the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association [3].
Projects like this and the book are great at seeing a tiny slice of another part of the country/world which you may never see. Nice job!
[1] https://www.alpca.org/halloffame/neilparker/
I saw a e-ink license place last week in LA. Anyone know what's up with that? Seems kind of hackable.
Obvious when you think about it but this is just current plates available for order, and lots of states (all?) let you keep old plates around as long as you want and they don't fall apart or something. Virginia used to have a few different "400th anniversary" plates in the mid 00s (Jamestown was founded in 1607), which I still see around regularly. I used to still see the even older standard 6 character plates around too -- those are mostly gone by now but every once in awhile one goes by.
Currently a good 5% of license plates I see parked on the streets of nyc are out of state paper licenses. Somehow I don’t think they are all newly purchased vehicles.
A few years ago, I set out to take a snapshot of a plate from every state. My rules were that I had to take it personally, it had to be a regular set of numbers and letters for that state - no vanities - and I had to be able to clearly see the whole thing.
I’m down to 3 left to get - North Dakota, West Virginia and Delaware. It’s been more than a year since I caught the last one (South Dakota) so I’m not sure I’ll ever be done.
They need a new section for paper license plates[1].
[1]: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2022/0...
So Illinois has St Louis Cardinals MLB plates, presumably for downstate residents that relate to STL more than Chicago… I guess in addition to being a question of state pride it’s probably also a matter of public safety that they don’t have Green Bay Packers NFL plates for Lake and McHenry residents, though!
I’m slowly getting a different plate in Minnesota each year. Our Critical Habitat plates are ready popular and pretty.
I'm very much in favor of local governments raising additional funds by selling cosmetic upgrades (rather than outsourcing enforcement of speed limits to privately owned traffic cameras, for instance).
What I found interesting is that both Louisiana and California put out strikingly similar license plates in 1993. Both had red script at the top on a white background with dark blue lettering.
If there are so many valid licence plate designs - it's easier to make fake ones. An ordinary cop is unlikely to tell the difference.
Interesting how many states offer out of state university plates. E.g. New York and Tennessee both offer Indiana University plates
I thought it was amusing that California has a Horseless Carriage license plate. Doesn't that just mean it's a car?
Lots of great plates out there. My favorite so far that I've seen is the NC watermelon plate.
My favorite one that I’ve seen is the Montana Glacier NP one.
I have the California Historic Vehicle plate on my NA Miata and I love the way it looks on the car
Hmmm... if America I would expect to see plates from, say, Bolivia too ...
As coming from country with actually working IT, I always wondered about those year and month tags... I get my yearly tax directly as bill to my bank...