I always notice license plates. I have a Canadian flag in my car that I wave whenever I see a Canadian plate! I see lots of Quebec and Ontario plates here, but have only seen one Alberta, one New Brunswick, and none from anywhere else in Canada.
I know it’s not the case in Maryland. I bought a new car in California recently, and my dad, who lives in Maryland, was surprised that I couldn’t keep my old license plates.
When I was growing up, Dad worked at a used car lot. One of the perks of the job was that he could drive cars that belonged to the lot. He drove a different car almost every week. The only way I could ever recognize his car in a parking lot was to look for the dealer plate, so I got used to recognizing cars by their plates.
Looking at plates helped me out once, too. A friend and I went to the Grand Canyon and rented a car there. When we were getting ready to leave a restaurant, we walked up to the car and he was getting the keys out. I then realized that it couldn’t be our car, because it had California license plates (ours had Arizona plates, since we rented it in Arizona).
I notice plates I haven’t seen before, but I don’t go looking for them specifically.
I pay more attention to county names on our plates. I never know when I might see someone I know.
Fionn and I play a nice little game while driving. When you see an out of state license plate (for this case, we’ll say Alabama 47XS29), you call out the state, then the last digit on the plate. You then get to hit someone in the car that many times. So, for the example, one would yell “Alabama 9!” then hit the other nine times. With letters, you say the alphabet till you get to that letter. It’s really fun, and it’s helped me memorize New Mexico, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Arkansas license plates from a distance. Florida and Georgia are a little tricky at times…the peach and the orange look too similar from a distance (friggin’ fruit lovin’ bastards).
I always look at license plates. Chicago is very close to the borders of Indiana and Wisconsin, so those are quite common, not to mention Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa plates. I see California plates pretty often, too. I guess when one state has more cars than most countries, you’re bound to see them all over the place. Or maybe I just notice them more cause I’m from California.
Growing up in the west it wasn’t uncommon to see BC (Beautiful British Columbia!) or Alberta plates, and when I lived in Michigan I saw Ontario plates often enough, but the other day I saw my first Quebec plate. Since then I’ve seen it a couple times (it’s just around the corner from my house), so I guess it’s a Quebecois who moved here or is on holiday. What’s the message on the plate mean?
I have seen European plates from time to time, but at about the same frequency of Hawaii plates - maybe one every few years.
I always loved going to national parks when I was a kid and seeing the plates from all over the country. People drive to Yellowstone from everywhere.
Je me souviens = I remember.
I leave the significance of this as an exercise for the reader. 
While bicycling to work this morning, I was passed by a Mini Cooper bearing
“O BEHAV”.
I did not nearly fall off laughing, but I did laugh out loud and swallowed a bug in the process. :eek:
Yeah, actually the phrase is an incredulous rethorical question/remark.
The backstory to all the cars with Hawaiian plates are that these all all rental cars. They quite possible are registered in Hawaii as new and either get “reassigned” to somewhere else before ever turning a mile, or actually were in Hawaii and later moved stateside. Rental car companys do very strange things with registrations. I used to have a fleet with Ohio plates and a few random ones from Utah. The Utah ones came right off a truck, brand-new in Las Vegas.
Nevada has so many specialty plates its almost comical. I want the Pyramid Lake plate on this page Nevada Charitable & Collegiate Plates so bad it hurts! But somebody already has it on a Sunset plate. But I know where he lives!
I notice other amateur radio plates (yes, mine are N9IWP), and plates with odd colorings (to see what state they are from). To a lesser extent I notice personalized plates.
Brian
Wow, I love how this thread keeps on resurrecting itself! Keep it up, people! I enjoy reading about license plates!
Oh, and while I’m at it, what plate on this page do you suppose that I fervently wish I had? (Hint: think of my username.)
Umm… Lake Tahoe?
Seriously, Yosemite Park is… amazing. I treasure my memories from visiting there.
Well, I’m geekier than you…
When I used to drive long distances in New Jersey (well, as long as they get) I started trying to see each three letter combination and three digit combination in order. Did get them all. Then I worked at seeing plates from all 50 states, which I did, helped by traveling a bit. I did the same thing when I moved to California.
License plates used to be al pretty boring, but states started doing interesting ones for the bicenntenial. I was living in Illinois at a time, and we had fun laughing at Indiana, whose plate looked like a nuclear meltdown. A few years later Illinois copied it.
Biggest confusion I had - when I visited San Diego, I would see cars with BC plates, and I wondered why so many cars from British Columbia would be in San Diego. It took several trips to figure out that BC stood for Baja California, and they were all visitors from Tiajuana.
A question to Dopers outside of North America: have you ever seen a car on your roads with North American plates? Do you spot odd or out-of-place plates, too, like Russian plates on cars in France, or plates from the Middle East with Arabic lettering? Do Aussies ever see cars with NZ plates?
Has anyone ever spotted a car with plates from a South American country on North American roads?
Indiana also has the god-awful default plates that look like cheap plastic. :rolleyes:
At least we have scads of specialty plates to choose from - and SUV’s can be classified as trucks - which have a blue on white plain plate.
We used to play word games with MI plates - what words or phrases could you make with the 3 letters. X Q & Z were a pain!
Indiana just uses numbers, with the first 2 indicating the county (alphabetical order - with 99 also being used for Marion/Indianapolis) - so you can tell which drivers :cough: Hamilton county :cough: to watch for.
elmwood, I saw cars with Russian plates in Helsinki… but that’s only 150 km or so from the Russian border. I honestly don’t remember looking at plates in other locations, like France.