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All of the vehicle license plates available in America

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Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#131

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.

Here's a good read about NYC's temporary license plate black market: https://www.streetsblogprojects.org/ghost-tags-part-1-the-de...

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#132
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Maryland is clearly just out of control with the plates: https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/content/images/size/w160... By the way, the majority of out-of-staters at UW are from neighboring Minnesota (with tuition reciprocity) and Illinois (the FIBs).

I've never heard of FIBs but I just Googled it and see that I correctly guessed what it means.

;-)

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#133

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…

So, did he end up getting the plate?

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#134
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never getting my carry permit back 27 states don't require a permit. At all. Ponder that.

What point are you trying to make here? You think in states that don't require permits, the state cannot bar that person from owning firearms? Obviously the person you are responding to is referring states that issue carry permits.

[deleted]

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if I took out my gun and fired randomly at a crowd I'm never getting my carry permit back regardless of whether I actually kill anyone. Fuck drunk drivers.

> never getting my carry permit back 27 states don't require a permit. At all. Ponder that.

True but not relevant. I'm saying we apply a much more lenient standard to people posing a threat to public safety with a vehicle than we do to people posing a threat to public safety via other means such as reckless use of a firearm or a laser pointer.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#136
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.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#137
post #43
post #20

I searched for Wisconsin in the table and found that Maryland and Pennsylvania have University of Wisconsin alumni plates, which I found odd.

Large universities have large alumni associations with local chapters throughout the US. In states where custom plates are easy to get, those associates will often ensure their universities have their own plate designs. It looks like the University of Florida has plates in at least six different states besides its home state: FL, VA, TX, GA, NC, MD, SC.

A quick Google search suggests that there are 760 000 living University of Indians alumni, 640 000 living University of Michigan alumni, around 500 000 living University of Wisconsin alumni, 450 000 living University of Florida alumni, 350 000 living University of Georgia alumni, and 170 000 living Georgia Tech alumni. I think that is all the schools people have mentioned so far.

It does seem reasonable that most of those would have some states, besides the home state of the university, with enough of their alumni that a custom plate would be worthwhile.

My school (Caltech) only has 24 000 living alumni so probably no custom plates for us in any state, even California. MIT has around 150 000, so maybe there is hope that at one nerd school gets a license plate somewhere. :-)

I wonder what the smallest group of people is that gets a special plate in every US state?

There are around 780 000 ham radio licensees in the US and every state offers ham radio plates, but I'm not sure that counts as a special plate because in many states a ham plate only differs from an ordinary plate in that the license number is your ham radio callsign.

For example here in Washington normal plates are of the form ABC1234. A ham callsign in the US is N letters, a single digit, and M letters, which is called an NxM callsign. The possible NxMs are 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, 1x3, and 2x3.

Someone looking at a ham plate would only know it is a ham plate if they recognized it was an NxM that matches one of the aforementioned NxMs. Anyone else would probably just think the state ran out of ABC1234 numbers and started a new format.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#138

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…

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.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#139
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know someone who was woken up by a State Trooper, fast asleep in her vehicle on the side of the road, with the engine running so it was obvious that she fell asleep while driving. It doesn't sound obvious to me. If it was cold out, you would run the engine for heat for instance.

It may not be obvious she was in fact driving, but it'll get you a DUI charge every time. Hell, even if you're in the back seat sleeping it off you're likely to get a charge if you have the keys anywhere accessible (and sometimes, even if you don't).

This is correct.

I also neglected to mention that the car wasn't neatly pulled over onto the side of the road but had driven itself into the ditch between the road and a field.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#140
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People usually drive their own car, and taking away someone's license can be life destroying in most parts of the country.

Wait, is it not possible to get banned from driving in the USA? For comparison the drink driving penalties are here: https://www.gov.uk/drink-driving-penalties

It is practically impossible unless one is in prison or something. In the future it could be enforced with biometrics authentication interlocks.
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