VANITY LICENSE PLATES

Your car has a face, and in Connecticut, that face can be subject to editorial review by the Department of Motor Vehicles.  Six characters may not seem dangerous, but in the wrong order your choice of vanity plates may apparently pose a serious threat to public morality. Or so says the DMV.

Since 1937, Connecticut motorists have been allowed to personalize their license plates… slowly, cautiously, and always under supervision. The earliest vanity plates were just two initials.  When possible combinations maxed out, you could do four letters.  And by the 1970’s, six characters combining letters and numbers.

Today you can also order one of the dozens of different special plates supporting various organizations or causes ranging from Friends of the Amistad to Preserving Long Island Sound.  There are plates for your pet, Special Olympics, Greenways, the Marine Corps League, Gold Star families, the Red Sox and Amateur Radio too. The DMV’s most recent addition celebrates Connecticut as “The Pizza State”. 

Mind you, not all requests for vanity plates are approved, despite their application fee of roughly $90 to over $140, depending on the plate.  That’s because the killjoys at the DMV don’t allow anything profane, crude, obscene, or vulgar.  Context, irony, and spelling variations are apparently not mitigating factors.

Examples of some of the 350 applications reportedly rejected in 2024 include WEEDBIZ (drug dealer?), F4RTBOX (bad muffler?), BIGSEXY (don’t ask) and GR8FUL (presumably a Jerry Garcia fan).  But somehow these plates got approved:  DICKS, BUTTS, BALLS and TOOL.  And we have confirm sightings of FUBAR, COVFEVE, PUTIN and RUSSIA.

So yes, these plates have existed in the wild, roaming our highways freely, confusing children and giving their parents a chuckle and something to explain to the backseat crowd.

I had a doctor once whose plate read NOPCMD.  I asked him why he hated computers.  He said I was misreading the plate and that I’d forgotten he was a urologist.

In a similar vein there’s the New Hampshire woman, Wendy Auger, who for many years has proudly displayed her plate PB4WEGO, harkening back to the phrase always uttered by Dads to their kids before a road trip.

It took the NH DMV 15 years to notice, which says less about the plate and more about the review process. For a time the DMV told Auger to return her plates as they suddenly realized they refer to a bodily function. The state has since relented.  After all, New Hampshire is the “Live Free or Die” state.

Not surprisingly, Connecticut lawmakers receive special plates identifying them as members of the House or Senate, with leadership titles prominently displayed. We’re told these plates confer no special treatment, no parking privileges, and no immunity from law enforcement. The word “told” is doing a lot of work here.