Vanity Plates
A vanity plate or personalized plate (U.S.), prestige plate, private number plate, or personalised registration (UK) or custom plate or personalised plate (Australia and New Zealand) is a special type of vehicle registration plate on an automobile or other vehicle. The owner of the vehicle will have paid extra money to have his or her own choice of numbers or letters, usually forming a recognisable phrase, slogan, or initialism on their plate. Sales of vanity plates are often a significant source of revenue for North American provincial and state licensing agencies. In some jurisdictions, such as the Canadian province of British Columbia, vanity plates have a different color scheme and design.
In 2007, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) and Stefan Lonce, author of License to Roam: Vanity License Plates and the Stories They Tell, conducted North America's first state by state and province by province survey of vanity plates, revealing that there are 9.7 million vehicles "vanitized" with personalized vanity license plates.
The survey ranked jurisdictions by "vanity plate penetration rate", which is the percentage of registered motor vehicles that are vanitized. Virginia has the highest U.S. vanity plate penetration rate (16.19%), followed by New Hampshire (13.99%), Illinois (13.41%), Nevada (12.73%), Montana (9.8%), Maine (9.79%), Connecticut (8.14%), New Jersey (6.88%), North Dakota (6.51%) and Vermont (6.11%). Texas had the lowest vanity plate penetration rate (.56%).
According to the Federal Highway Administration, in 2005 there were 242,991,747 privately owned and commercial registered automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles in the U.S., which means that 3.83% of eligible U.S. vehicles are vanitized.
Massachusetts vanity plate on a parked motorcycle in Boston. This licence plate would be considered inappropriate in many jurisdictions, due to the presence of an obscene word.
The survey also found that vanity plates are issued by every state and the District of Columbia, and every province, except for Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.
In some states and provinces, optional plates can also be vanity plates and are a choice of motorists who want a more distinctive personalised plate. However, the maximum number of characters on an optional plate may be lower than on a standard-issue plate. For example, the U.S. state of Virginia allows up to 7.5 characters (a space or hyphen is counted as 0.5 character) on a standard-issue plate, but only up to 6 characters on many of its optional plates.
In some states, a motorist may check the availability of a desired combination online.
All U.S. states and Canadian provinces that issue vanity plates have a "blue list" of vanity plates that contains banned words, phrases, or letter/number combinations. The U.S. state of Florida, for example, has banned such plates as "PIMPALA", while the state of New York bans any plates with the letters "FDNY", "NYPD", or "GOD", among others. Often the ban is to eliminate confusion with plates used on governmental vehicles or plates used on other classes of vehicles. However, a licensing authority's discretion to deny or revoke "offensive" vanity plates is finite. For example, some U.S. motorists have successfully sued their state governments on that issue under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The "blue list" is not definitive; in general, the agent processing an application for a vanity plate can reject a plate if it is deemed offensive, even if the phrase does not match a banned word exactly. State DMVs have received complaints about offensive vanity plates. In this case, the DMV can revoke a plate if it is deemed offensive, even if it were previously approved.
What year was the first Thanksgiving in North America held?
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How to Protect Your Car Inside and Out This Winter
Utilizing these tips will help motorists avoid potential roadside issues and eliminate some unnecessary stress while traveling during winter.
Get a basic tune-up — Hoses, belts, spark plugs and wires should be checked and changed if necessary.
Protect against freeze ups — Antifreeze/coolant is extremely important in colder temperatures. If there is too much water and not enough antifreeze/coolant in the system, it can freeze up, expand and crack key engine components. Motorists should check fluid levels and top them off before temperatures plummet.
Check tire tread — Bald tires are not only unsafe, but can potentially lead to a disaster on slick roadways. Tires connect the car to the road, so traction is imperative during winter. In areas with high snow accumulation, winter tires are a solid investment, providing more traction when accelerating, braking and turning.
Replace worn brake pads and shoes — Having maximum stopping power is essential.
Use a winter-formulated washer fluid — Regular blue washer fluids can freeze in the washer reservoir or on the windshield while driving. Special de-icer formulas will stay liquid in the washer reservoir at temperatures as low as -34 degree Farenheit.
Check windshield wipers — If they streak or cause problems, motorists should buy blades especially made for winter conditions. Visibility is crucial this time of year.
Be prepared for an emergency — While routine maintenance can afford drivers a certain level of comfort, having a well-stocked kit provides peace of mind. Keep a cellular phone, extra de-icer washer fluid, a good ice scraper and snowbrush, spray de-icer, blankets, snacks, bottled water and warm clothing in the kit.
Remove snow and ice from the entire car — Not taking the time to clear off all surfaces before venturing onto roadways can create dangerous situations for all motorists. Blowing snow and ice causes reduced visibility and treacherous obstructions.
Pay attention — Take a moment to listen to weather and traffic reports. When the conditions are too hazardous, motorists should stay off the roads. If people must travel when roads are bad, it is important they know their vehicle and use extreme caution. Keeping an 8-10 second distance between cars, reducing speeds on hills, storing sandbags in the trunk of rear-wheel drive cars and wearing seat belts will all help prevent accidents from occurring. It is also a good idea for motorists to always keep at least a half tank of gas in vehicles during winter months — it will be their only source of heat if stranded.
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The first Thanksgiving in North America was held in Virginia in 1619.
