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Never having lived in any other states, I can't speak with certainty about how their residents regard license plates. But we take them quite seriously in Colorado.
They often proclaim length of residence, which is why I
keep my XJ-2555 tags on the old Dodge, despite inquiries
from the county clerk's office on every renewal visit:
Ed, don't you want some shiny new plates to replace
those beat-up illegible old ones?
Well, no, I don't. I'd rather have an XH
prefix,
but I arrived in Chaffee County too late for that. Even the
consequent XJ
is a vast improvement on the generic
FBN
prefix on the other car. Besides, it's not in
my interest to make my license plate any easier to read --
the people who want to read license plate numbers may
perform valuable services to society, but such services
have never done my checking account a bit of good.
Other license plates proclaim military service, like
Pearl Harbor Survivor
or Honorably Discharged
Veteran.
There are pale blue designer plates, many
bearing personal messages. Public agencies have their own
tags. Any group of 250 or more can get a special plate. I
suspect that Colorado has more kinds of license plates,
bearing more messages, explicit or implied, than any other
jurisdiction in the world.
And now state Rep. Bob Hagedorn, an Aurora Democrat, wants to add another variety. He has proposed that motorists with multiple drunken-driving convictions be issued special license plates so that others might easily identify them.
Presumably, a car with DUI0298
would alert police
that the driver is more likely than other drivers to be
operating two tons of dangerous machinery while not in any
condition to do so responsibly. Thus it would qualify for
special attention, and the rest of us, upon spotting the
tags, might avoid it.
This seems rather sensible. Public stigma generally works better than law-enforcement, and at much less cost, to reduce dangerous and anti-social activity like drunken driving.
But the convicted motorist might not be the only one to drive the car, thus leading to undeserved ill repute, and further, drunken drivers aren't the only menace on our highways whose presence should be advertised.
For instance, several studies have shown that the drivers who chatter on their cellular telephones have the same gory accident rates as those navigating under the pernicious influence of Demon Rum.
Obviously, we deserve protection from them. Special license plates (GAB0001 or YAK0001 might be good places to start the series) would help, and for further safety, the law should require a special blinking indigo light atop the vehicle that comes on whenever the phone is activated.
The police could thus easily monitor these menaces, and the rest of us would know to pull over whenever one of the distinctive warning lights began to blink.
Another prudent license plate warning category: Road Ragers. As it is, I don't know whether the car I'm passing belongs to someone who's just sensibly poking along, or to a testosterone-crazed maniac who sees my passage an affront, and will tailgate with his high-beams on while aiming out the window with his 9-mm pistol.
It's hard to fit a suitable description into the seven characters available on a Colorado tag, so we'd probably need several sequences -- RAGE001, MENACE9, MEAN171, etc.
Thus warned, we normal drivers could let the Road Ragers cut their own swaths, say by easing back to let them pass on a black-ice blind curve. And as we do now, we'd indulge in gleeful laughter when we saw the raging vehicle soar off the cliff, its tail-lights disappearing into some rugged abyss.
For my personal protection, I'd like it if the state would also add another category of warning tags, along the lines of RUBE946 or HICK548.
This would let urban drivers know quickly that my car was being driven by someone who doesn't know whether the exit he wants to take is on the right or left, and is thus creeping in the middle lane, anxiously scanning the multitude of signs, hoping for some guidance.
This must be quite annoying to other motorists, but the RUBE or HICK plate would assure them that the befuddle driver, while a nuisance, probably isn't dangerous, drunk or distracted.
Doubtless there are other categories of Colorado motorist who should carry stigmatizing messages on their license plates, but this should be a good start on protecting citizens from all the threats, not just drunken drivers, on the state's highways.
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