What's the deal with licence plates? I've never quite understood the whole process.
In Britain (and most of Europe i think), you buy a car. It has a number plate. The car keeps this plate for it's lifetime. If the car is sold then it just gets registered in the new owner's name. The plate stays the same.
Do you need to get new plates periodically even if you keep the same car? And what's the reason for this?
A long time ago, we had to get new plates every year. Then they went to a system where you keep the same plate and each year get a sticker to put on the corner of the plate showing that the registration is current. The sticker just had a standard design and the expiration month and year.
That worked well for a while, but then lowlifes started stealing the stickers to put on their own plates. They'd usually cut off the corner of the plate to do it, so the victim would have to go through the expense and aggravation of getting a new plate; then possibly have the same thing happen again. So now the stickers also have the plate number on them.
You can get standard plates with whatever number the system coughs up. You can also pay extra and specify your own letters and/or numbers. There was a real jerk in a neighborhood I once lived in, whose car's tags read BIG RON. Provided that what you ask for isn't already taken, isn't pornographic, and isn't confusing, it's yours.
You can also pay extra and get different styles of plates. Here are the ones available in my state: https://secure.kentucky.gov/kytc/plates/web/#9b02e588-632a-4842-bc61-02cedfc3a2fb
Some of those are available to anyone, others are restricted to certain persons. For example, to get a Marine Veteran plate one has to show proof of USMC service.
Very informative. Thanks๐
shareYou're welcome. The personalized plates can get interesting. The computer systems are supposed to screen out profanity, and there will always be a human in the process somewhere who will see what the proposed plate will read and might act on it, but sometimes things slip by. A few years ago, in California IIRC, someone managed to get a plate which read "FAH Q."
About 30 years ago, on the highway outside DC, I ended up behind a car with the plate "APOLLO 7." I wondered if I might be following Wally Schirra and tried to get up close to see the driver, but before I could the car exited the highway.
In West Virginia in the mid-1980s, tags were limited to six characters. Might still be, for all I know. But when West Virginian Mary Lou Retton won several medals in the 1984 Olympics, the state's governor directed that a special tag "MARY LOU" be made for her if she wanted it. She accepted it and used it for a while, but some jerk stole it.
Kentucky's system seems to prohibit personalized tags with the same format as standard tags; three numbers followed by three letters or vice versa. I had thought about using "CAP 811" for my car but the system wouldn't accept it. This being a movie board, you might recognize the reference.
The states usually do a thorough check for potentially obscene or offensive letter combinations. These include acronyms, foreign words and contemporary slang. "WTF" is one letter combination that was recently added to the prohibited list, for obvious reasons.
shareCAP 811
Without googling, I know it is from Fail-Safe, a "Go" code to the USAF bombers containing nukes
Yep. For the benefit of others reading this, it took essentially the same story Dr. Strangelove made seem ridiculous and instead made it seem all too plausible and even likely to happen. One of my favorite movies. My standard line in recommending it to friends is, if you have a brain this movie will scare the hell out of you.
Have you read the book? It was written in 1962 and is set in 1967. It's essentially identical to the movie but with a few differences. For example, the President, although never named, is clearly JFK, fifty years old and in his second term. The authors, Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, were not professional novelists as far as I know but did a good job with it. If you liked the movie I think you'd like the book.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H196NCF/
I read it years ago. IIRC the Larry Hagman character was more drawn out, for example we learn that he does Russian crossword puzzles to keep himself sharp.
shareYes, it did more with the Peter Buck character, the Russian translator played by Hagman in the movie. His talent for languages had been discovered during his military service. He liked the job at the White House because it had long, idle hours; he had some regular work to do but nothing close to a full eight hours per day. Mostly it was to be there in case a Russian translator was needed. This left him lots of free time to study for his night classes in law school.
The book had one gaffe, an unintentionally funny line regarding Buck. Before the big crisis he was in awe of the people around him, those like the President and other high officials. They had a toughness and sharpness beyond anything he could ever approach, he believed. During this terrible crisis, despite great fear at times, he handled himself well, hadn't panicked. He had been tested in white hot fire and had not failed. It was a life-changing event; he saw that he was far sharper and tougher than he had imagined himself to be.
Buck muses about this and is not thinking at that moment of the day's other events, and the text simply reads something like, "He knew his life would be forever changed after that day." My reaction when I read that was, well sure, dude, New York City just got flattened by twenty megatons and millions of people are dead, I'd say your life is going to be forever changed!
I've had the same plate for almost 25 years. It comes with me when I get a new car. If it becomes too warn or unreadable I'll have to get a new one. The province where I live last changed the design of our plates in since the early 80s but we are switching to a new reflective plate this fall.
As for why the plate stays with the person and not the car, I have no idea.
From what I heard, it is illegal to own a car without license plates here in the US. Usually it's part of registering your vehicle, and it acts as an ID for your car. It's one of the ways the cops can identify who you are, and you have to make sure the registry is up to date each year, because it will expire if you don't keep it up.
I think they give you the option when you first get the plates, to choose what they will say, but you're limited by 7 characters. Those fun frames are optional too. I don't think you need to change them unless you want a fun vanity plate on the front of your car, and even then, you need to look up what kind of local laws there are regarding vanity plates. It differs from one state to the next.
I'm sure the laws vary by state, but as far as I know you can keep a car without a license plate as long as it's on private property and you don't drive it. It can be kept in your garage or in your driveway but you can't park it on the street.
shareI guess the USA is the pineapple of car tags.
sharei have had the same plate number for over 30 years. i like it that way.
share