http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0923041washtags19.html had an amusing list of license plates which are banned. I was cracking up reading them. Some of them went through interesting lengths to get away with their hijinks, such as TTTTTT9 six ‘T’ nine (69) .
Sucks to see “3MTA3” was banned. I’ll have to go with my second choice, “TIHZTA3”
A friend once applied for “666INME” and was turned down. He was upset because “666 NME” (the standard issue plate) was okay and in use.
And of course there’s always ASSORGY…
Someone recently challenged their right to keep their ’ GOT MILF’ plate. Someone noticed it on the road and complained. DMV rescinded it.
I often see a car parked here at work has JCDYD4U. Always wondered if they caught any crap for that.
I noticed many Christian-themed license plates on cars when I worked in Behind The Orange Curtain (Orange County, CA – ‘Reagan Country’). Apparently Christian tags are okay. But I heard that someone with ATHEIST had his plates rescinded.
I presume 6ULDV8 is on the list? I am not too original.
Many years ago a friend of mine from Missouri asked about a plate he’d seen back home. It said QUE4ME. He had no idea what that meant. It’s apparently a regional thing. So much so that it slipped through, apparently.
Do they check for Bad Words in other languages? I would expect Spanish at least, in the USA, and French in Canada.
But there’s a plate I often see around my place in Toronto that is a string of roman letters which, I suspect, approximate some word in a cyrillic-written language: Russian or Ukrainian, perhaps. Would the Ontario Ministry of Transportation check that? What if I got a plate that said, “FIKULO”? That’s a swear word, but not in English or French. Would they find out what language it is and then check?
Hm. Maybe I could get DERMO.
My personal favorite was the California court reporter who had the plate TPUBG. Innocuous, right? Except if you can read machine steno, that’s phonetic for FUK. She insisted it was for the shorthand way of writing the phrase “If You Can.” Yeah, right, sure.
It took over ten years before someone understood it and complained, but it was finally rescinded. Personally, I thought she should have been allowed to keep it; it’s seriously obscure, and extremely creative.
The most daring one I’ve seen was in Ontario, a lot of years ago, but not long after they introduced personalized license plates: LSD 025. The car bearing these plates was parked outside a music store in Hamilton.
In California they do. They check in just about every language you can imagine. The form has a line for you to give your translation. If there is the slightest doubt, the plates are delayed until they check.
Luckily for me, the person who took my application years ago for personalized plates was an ex-Speech geek who got it right away.
YHS 4N6
Idea, don’t ban offensive plates, just charge (say) three or four thousand dollars for them. If someone wants to be a jerk so much, let the market rule!
A guy at my high school had “SINSE”. Wanna guess how he paid for his new truck? (Hint: it wasn’t doing yard work!)
One time long ago I saw a VW bug with “FOR Q”.
Better yet, let folks bid on them, eBay style.