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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

#141
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

;-)

One of the top results in a web search (apparently FIP and FIB are interchangeable):

> the Chicago Reader observed in a 1988 article titled “Invasion of the FIPs: boom time in southwestern Michigan.” “One local newspaper estimates that Chicago-area residents, all of them nonvoters, make up more than half the area’s taxpayers and pay more than 60 percent of its local tax load.

Those inconsiderate jerks should stay home (or go somewhere else). The locals really want to experience the full cost of their town services.

[1] https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/how-illinios-became-fip...

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#142
post #137
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

MIT is hard to search for because lots of states have a "ducks unlimited" plate, but Maryland (which we've already seen is plate-happy) has plates described as "Maryland - MIT Club of Washington".

Re "nerd schools", there are five schools with "Technology" in the name that have plates in their own states: Rochester Institute of Technology (New York), Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida Institute of Technology, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Indiana Institute of Technology. (Before doing this search I'd only heard of the first two.)

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#144
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, with hundreds of legal variations, how can the police keep track of them all? Counterfeiting a plate wouldn't require a very exacting match, just close enough to fly under the radar.

Personally, it’s all the other plate readers I care about too. I’m more a privacy nut than trying to evade police detection. I’d imagine, as with so much, cops just outsource it to a data broker type service. They feed the camera footage to a third party API that spits back matched data. Either plate info or human info. My data doesn’t need to go into so many tracking DBs. No way so many small agencies can do anythin…

May I ask why your plate information being out there concerns you? If it's 3rd party "plate readers" tracking your travel, your vehicle is already sending telemetry data outbound regardless, after you give the manufacturer 40 grand and you don't even get to pick which fancy picture goes on your car.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#145
post #137
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

If I had to guess, it would be military in nature. Perhaps the Congressional Medal of Honor? Less than 4000 have ever been awarded.

But I just checked 3 different states and only 2 of them offer a special plate for that. So you need something more common to have such a plate in every state.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#146
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, it’s all the other plate readers I care about too. I’m more a privacy nut than trying to evade police detection. I’d imagine, as with so much, cops just outsource it to a data broker type service. They feed the camera footage to a third party API that spits back matched data. Either plate info or human info. My data doesn’t need to go into so many tracking DBs. No way so many small agencies can do anythin…

May I ask why your plate information being out there concerns you? If it's 3rd party "plate readers" tracking your travel, your vehicle is already sending telemetry data outbound regardless, after you give the manufacturer 40 grand and you don't even get to pick which fancy picture goes on your car.

Nothing especially rational, although generally I like to minimize what I can. If I can easily reduce one form of data leak I will.

Your point is correct. There are many sources that we each hemorrhage data from, and it’s likely a lost battle.

Thinking a little more there are aspects of choice and consent here. I know I bought a car with telemetry, a cell modem in it, and a gps receiver, so it can be tracked. I’m not willingly opting into continuous surveillance by various third parties. It happens and driving is worth more to me then my loss of data tantrum, so I have a car and drive.

It’s not all rational.

That said, I also have an older car with no electronic monitoring and love it too.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#147

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 ev…

Go to the parking lot for Niagara Falls on the US side (Goat Island I think it's called?). You should see all the plates except for Alaska and Hawaii on an average day I think as well as a decent number of Canadian provinces. We were there about a month ago looking at plates and ran into another family looking for plates while we were there!

Been to the Canadian side literally dozens of times, holidays and weekdays, but by far it's Ontario, New York or New Jersey repping most of 'em. A few Texas here and there, but never something like Alabama. Always wondered why that's so.

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about America but in the UK people don't get their driving licence taken away that often, even if they have hit 12 points (ie: racked up enough offences to theoretically lose it). There is a lot of consideration as to whether removing the driving licence will cause hardship and defendants obviously usually argue that it will (with some truth) so judges sometimes don't remove the licence. Anecdotally, I f…

>in the UK people don't get their driving licence taken away that often In England and Wales, a drink-driving offence would attract a minimum of a 12 month disqualification unless there are very compelling mitigating factors. On a second offence (or a serious first offence), you would usually have to undergo a medical examination and re-take your driving test to get your license back. https://www.sentencingcouncil.or…

One in five continue to drive:

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-10304829/Mo...

Re: All of the vehicle license plates available in America

#149

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...

I think they should civil forfeiture the cars.
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