Random wondering: When you see cars (almost invariably a silver or white sedan, never a cool car) that have government license plates (I believe they’re white with blue print and say “U.S. Government” at the bottom), who’s driving?
I assume that congressmen and the like (White House Officials, etc) get them. Would a secretary for, say, the FBI be entitled to these plates, and are there any extra privilages that come with them? I can imagine that it would make cops more hesitatnt to pull that car over or ticket them, but is there anything else, or just to make them feel important?
Police officers will not hesitate to pull over a car with government plates, since there’s a small chance that the person behind the wheel is very important.
When I was considering joining the Navy, the local recruiter took some of the neighborhood kids to Norfolk to visit a ship. We were in the official recruiter -mobile (a white van with government plates). The recruiter, who was a crazy bastard though we all loved him, was at one time doing 90 in a 35mph zone and was promptly pulled over and ticketed.
The government plates are on government owned vehicles, it’s not like government employees or legislators get them for their private vehicles.
It’s also interesting to note that the first letter on the plates denotes the agency that the vehicle belongs to. A for Agriculture, I for Interior, etc.
CE for Corps of Engineers - there are all kinds of govt. employees out there in those cars (though not as many in the past 15 years due to cutbacks.)
I find it interesting that misuse of a govt. vehicle is the only employee infraction (non-criminal) that Congress has actually passed a law about - misuse of the vehicle carries an automatic 30 day suspension.
Think of it this way, NinjaChick, a vehicle with gov’t tags is just a company car. As the U.S. Gov’t is the largest employer in the world, it has an awful lot of company cars. 185,000 of 'em, according to GSA.