Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
How many specialty license plates do we need?
joe doakes
Enh. I’ll cut the veterans some slack.
I’ll draw the line at “Cis-Female Veteran”.
6 thoughts on “Plated”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
As long as you’re spit-balling, here’s what the DMV currently offers.
https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/dvs/forms-documents/Documents/MV_SpecialPlatesApplication.pdf
I’m actually surprised women want a separate but equal vanity plates.
My soapbox is that driving would be infinitely safer and nicer if licensing and license plates were handled by insurance companies, who have the most to lose from bad drivers, and the most to gain by being nice to good drivers. Make it legible, nothing obscene, and go with it. Never need to replace plates again, no annual registration tax, nothing.
I appreciate the label as a warning of a potential hazard.
Bike:
A couple of things about your idea. Will you make the insurance companies responsible for the making of plates? That could result in different styles, bad designs, and things multiplied worse than Joe’s post was commenting.
Part of the purpose of having to replace plates every seven years is to try to force fresh plates on cars so law enforcement can read them. Are you saying that you don’t want to help law enforcement be able to read plates.
Keep in mind part of the reg tax goes directly to the state and indirectly to the counties to help maintain roads. Are you saying that you don’t want to try to maintain the roads?
The insurance companies by trying to keep rates as low as possible or increasing them on bad drivers already do what you’re calling for.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Walter; just like any company ordering commodities, you have some basic ground rules. License plate # must be unique and at least 4″ tall or something like that, must be visible at a distance of X feet in ordinary light. Unreadable after a quick washing? Law enforcement issues a fix it ticket. All of this already exists in the law.
And yes, some of registration tax goes to roads, as does much of the gas tax, much of the property tax, much of other taxes…..it won’t kill us to get rid of one of them and adjust the gas tax to cover it. Plus, I’m pretty sure that the $40/year that the state collects from me is largely absorbed in the cost of administering the tax. It’s really, really inefficient compared with the gas tax.