|
A vanity plate or personalized plate (US); prestige plate, private number plate, cherished plate or personalised registration (UK); personalised plate (Australia, New Zealand and UK) or custom plate (Australia and New Zealand) is a special type of vehicle registration plate on an automobile or other vehicle. The owner of the vehicle pays extra money to have his or her own choice of numbers or letters, usually forming a recognizable phrase, slogan, or abbreviation 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. ==North America== Vanity plates are issued by every state and the District of Columbia, and every province, except for Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. Quebec was scheduled to start offering vanity plates in 2015, leaving Newfoundland and Labrador as the only North American jurisdiction with no vanity plates. However, Quebec was not able to start offering vanity plates, reportedly because of computer issues. 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 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.〔(: Who's So Vain? )〕 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 (9.7%), Connecticut (8.14%), New Jersey (6.8%), North Dakota (6.5%) and Vermont (6.1%). Texas had the lowest vanity plate penetration rate (0.5%). 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 have vanity plates. Ontario had the highest Canadian 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%). According to Statistics Canada, in 2006 there were 14,980,046 registered motor vehicles (excluding buses, trailers, and off-road, farm and construction vehicles) in the provinces and territories that issue vanity plates, which means that 2.94% of eligible Canadian vehicles have vanity plates. In some states and provinces, optional plates can also be vanity plates and are a choice of motorists who want a more distinctive personalized 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 also 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Blue license plate special )〕 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, as some U.S. motorists have successfully sued their state governments on that issue under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.〔("License Plates" ), First Amendment Center〕 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.〔(The Smoking Gun: Archive )〕 In this case, the DMV can revoke a plate if it is deemed offensive, even if it had been previously approved.〔(End Of Road For GOTMILF License Plate - July 21, 2004 )〕 The "blue list" may be limited to genuine vanity plates, not covering computer-generated accidents. For example, Florida's famous "A55 RGY" license plate (with the standard drawing of an orange in the middle) looks like "ASS ORGY".〔http://www.snopes.com/photos/risque/license.asp〕 In some cases, a plate that has already been issued can be recalled and stripped from the vehicle's owner if the plate's message is found to be in violation after it has been issued. Some notable cases are: * In 2002, a Florida man was stripped of his plates that read "ATHEIST", but was then allowed to keep them.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Florida Officials Relent On Banning "Atheist" License Plate )〕 * A Virginia woman lost her plates that read "HAISSEM" (''messiah'' spelled backwards).〔(Plate Debate: POOFTER WINS!!! )〕 * In 2002, a Washington resident's request for the plate "GOTMILF" was approved, but was later canceled because of complaints. Another factor leading to the cancellation was that the applicant gave a misleading meaning of GOTMILF (Got MILF, a slight alteration of Got Milk?) when applying for the plate. *In 2007, a South Dakota woman nearly lost her vanity plates that read "MPEACHW" (meaning "impeach W"),〔(RapidCitt.com - Rapid City, South Dakota's News Leader » News » Top )〕 but the decision to remove them was later reversed.〔(The Raw Story | 'MPEACHW' plate recall reversed )〕 * In 2009, Jimmy Marr, a longtime member of Eugene, Oregon's controversial Pacifica Forum, was stripped of his plates that read "NO ZOG". Protestors at a Phoenix, Oregon, Neo-Nazi meeting noticed the plates on Marr's vehicle. The state DMV had initially approved the plate without recognizing it as anti-Semitic.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=State recalls anti-Semitic license plate )〕 * Tennessee〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Tennessee woman denied to display her love of tofu )〕 and Colorado〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Woman's love of tofu too obscene for vanity plate )〕 are among several states that have banned the vanity plate "ILVTOFU." Though the applicants stated the plate read "I love tofu," state authorities argued it could be misread as "I love to F.U." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vanity plate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|