Vehicular Vanity

Used to describe the urge some motorists have for personalized plates on their vehicles. For those unfamiliar with vanity plates, this applies to one which bears a unique collection of letters, numbers or both. Here's some examples.The car owner pays extra $ to have a choice of numbers, letters or an abbreviated form of a phrase, slogan, or abbreviation. Some motorists use personalized license plates to advertise a  business, charity interest and more within a state's Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) guidelines.Vanity plates are issued by every U.S. state and the District of Columbia, and every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador.

What state has the highest percentage of vanity plates?

According to the American Association of Vehicle Administrators, folks in Virginia own more vanity plates than any other state. One out of every six cars on Virginia highways has a personalized license plate. Virginia offers some of the cheapest vanity plates in the country, $10 annually compared to $50 in Maryland and $100 in Washington, D.C.

As former VA residents for 12 years, this was interesting as was finding out the percentage in our current state of NH is 13%. The cost is the town/city and state registration fees, plus $40 (annually for the Vanity Plate) plus an $8 plate fee (one-time). 

Here's some states with the most and least number of vanity plates:

Virginia - 19.1%

Illinois - 13.41%

Nevada - 12.7%

Montana - 9.8%

New Jersey - 6.8%

North Dakota - 6.5%

Wyoming - 2.94%

Texas - 0.5%

In neighboring Canada, Ontario has the highest vanity plate penetration rate (4.59%), followed by Saskatchewan (2.69%), Manitoba (1.96%), the Yukon (1.79%), and the Northwest Territories (1.75%). British Columbia had the lowest vanity plate penetration rate (0.59%) among those provinces that issue vanity plates. 

Here's a 2022 listing for New England states, including NH.

New England Vanity Plate numbers in 2022 (Internet source)

All U.S. states and Canadian provinces that issue them have a blue list of vanity plates which contains banned words, phrases, or letter/number combinations. The list is not definitive as the agent processing a vanity plate application can reject it, if deemed offensive, even if the phrase doesn't exactly match a banned word. State DMVs that receive complaints about offensive vanity plates can revoke a plate, even if it had been previously approved. 

Florida has banned plates such as PIMPALA. The state of New York bans plates with FDNY, NYPD and GOD. Many states reject certain wording if combinations are vulgar or offensive, including swear words, also plates with racial, sexual, ethnic and religious discriminations.

But, while a state licensing authority can deny or revoke what it considers offensive vanity plates, some motorists have successfully sued state governments on that issue under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. That happened several years ago, when a federal judge found California’s ban on offensive personalized license plates unconstitutional ruling that it constitutes viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment.

The New Hampshire DMV doesn't allow references to these subjects in any language, read forward, backward, by mirror image or phonetic spelling — intimate body parts, sexual or excretory acts, profanity or obscenity, violence, illegal activities, drugs or illegal intoxicants, gangs, racial, ethnic, religious, gender or sexual orientation hatred or bigotry.

Maine, its neighboring New England State, had relaxed editorial standards in 2015 and allowed obscenities on customized plates, rejecting those of hate or violence, and welcoming most anything else. That changed in 2022, after the Maine Secretary of State enacted standards similar to NH and issued a public statement: The First Amendment protects your right to have any bumper sticker you want . . . but it doesn’t force the state to issue official registration plates that subject children to obscenity or profanity.

New England Vanity Plate numbers in 2022 (Internet source)

Full disclosure is that Grenville displays a vanity plate on his vehicle to reflect both his Navy service and ham radio license.

Your turn — Do you or have you ever had a vanity plate ?