Ban men!!

[Gob]

The states not requiring a front license plate are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

What is the logic behind this?

[Crackpot]

Generally speaking:
Cost saving.
There are relatively few cases where a front plate is useful where a rear plate would not suffice.
To discourage people from standing in front of a speeding car trying to get a plate number.
Aesthetics.
One more thing to catch/injure a pedestrian on impact.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Ohio changed last July. The cops are unhappy.

the state of Ohio expects to save $1.4 million a year by making fewer plates

[Jarlaxle]

Reading a front tag at night on a vehicle with headlights on is impossible.

[datsunaholic]

Generally speaking:
Cost saving.
There are relatively few cases where a front plate is useful where a rear plate would not suffice.
To discourage people from standing in front of a speeding car trying to get a plate number.
Aesthetics.
One more thing to catch/injure a pedestrian on impact.

I dunno. The amount of hit and runs where the offending driver left their front bumper behind (with plate still attached) is more common than you would think. Heck, last week I pried the front plate of the other car out of the wheelwell of a Camry that had been hit (and the other guy left the scene).

[MGMcAnick]

They tried making front license plates mandatory here in 1976. Plates are issued each year by month according to the initial of one's last name. "A"s are due in February, "B''s in March, "C"s and "Ds" in April. In '76 they got thru May when "E"s "F"s and "G"s came due. By then the state's legislators realized that the new law applied to them too. Many cars had no provision to attach a front tag. That had to be added. It was expensive for those who couldn't do it themselves. They said the heck with that, We'll just change the law.

There was also the discovery that the state senator who had sponsored the bill that we adopt front plates had accepted a sizeable campaign contribution from the company that made the reflective paint used on them. Voila'. Double the paint sales,

[Gob]

I had to look into it, but here goes...

The current UK number plate system

Nowadays, we have a number plate system that was introduced in 2001, with seven characters as follows:

• Two letters – these used to refer to a local DVLA office, but since the offices were all closed in 2013 when the DVLA was centralised they now just indicate a region.

• Two numbers – these change every six months to indicate when the car was first registered. For cars sold between March and August, the numbers will be the last two digits of the year itself – so ’16’ for the year 2016. Cars sold between September and April the following year will have 50 added to the same last two digits – so September 2016 cars will get ‘66’.

• Three letters – these are randomly issued letters. Because they’re allocated in blocks to dealers, you’ll often see cars from the same manufacturer with letters that are in sequence.

Odd numbers...
The information above is only for guidance purposes, as there are plenty of exceptions to the number plate rules. For example the letters ‘I’, ‘O’, ‘I’ and ‘Z’ are never seen on number plates because they look too similar to other letters or numbers.

The letter Q is not used currently either, but it was used as a prefix up to 2001 on stolen and recovered cars that couldn’t be reliably identified (e.g. ‘cut and shuts’) and kit cars made from elements of various different vehicles.

Rules for UK number plates
All number plates look the same for a reason - the colour and size of the plate, and the shape of the letters and numbers is set out in DoT regulations. It’s done that way so they’re easy to read both by human eyes, and by the cameras and computers used in Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems.

Driving a car with altered plates – for example with characters modified to spell a word – is illegal, and you can be fined up to £1,000 for number plate offences. Here’s a rundown of the current legal requirements for number plates:

• Number plates must be illuminated at night.
• Plates must be legible and not obscured by dirt.
• Size, colour, font and spacing must meet DoT regulations.
• Number plates must be manufactured to British Standard specification.
• EU or national GB/England/Scotland/Wales emblems are the only optional decoration permitted – in the standard position on the left of the plate.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Generally, Cape plates consist of three letters followed by five numbers. The first letter is C so everyone knows where it was registered - the Cape. Rather like The Ohio State University (which blew it with Oral Roberts), "the Cape" is understood not to mean the mundane northern and eastern Capes but the exciting western one.

Here where the Western Province Rugby Union team play at Newlands in Cape Town, the government has spent a long time deciding on how to format number plates that comply with the format used by other provinces. They all have two or three letters at the end - MP for Mpumalanga; GP for Gauteng (?); FS for the Free State; NP for Northern Province and so on. We have no such identifier at the end.

Ours all begin with C and two other letters which identify both province and town. That's also true only of Kwa-Zulu Natal where the plates END with Nxx or Nx identifying towns.

Big deal - we must END our plates like the other dudes. There was strong sentiment to add WP on the end - in fact, a majority of the ignorant public favored that. The governmental wise-persons decided that it was much better to go with WC.

That's a decision that'll end up in the toilet.

[Long Run]

Having a front plate at least doubles the chance of photo radar "nabbing" a speeding car.

[MGMcAnick]

I had to look into it, but here goes...

Is there any way to track the original British FUA 200 plate number on my 1937 MG TA back to an original, more than likely deceased, owner? I've already traced the matching engine and body numbers to September 1937 production. The chassis number indicates slightly earlier production. I don't know if the chassis sat at Abington on Thames waiting for a body, or if the original body was replaced after an accident. A day's work will swap an early MG body.

[MGMcAnick]

Having a front plate at least doubles the chance of photo radar "nabbing" a speeding car.

We also don't have photo stop light or photo radar here. Never did. Many states have done away with it after it was discovered that the cities and states didn't "own" it. The company that did, got a cut of the fines. Kind of like a crooked sheriff or judge.

Big Brother is not watching you here. At least not that way.

Another odd thing we do here is have a decal applied to the corner of most tags showing a two letter county identifier. I saw one with an SD county ID on my way home from work yesterday. I asked google, hands free of course, what county SD is. Sheridan county is about 250 miles from here, and has 2500 people on a big day.

30+ years ago the county ID was stamped (up-down) into the metal on the left end of a tag in letters about half as tall as the number. Tags got pretty crowded in counties with over 100,000 registered cars,

Today's KS tags are not stamped at all. A reflective white plastic sheet with the number, and whatever design, is applied to a flat sheet of aluminum under heat and pressure.

New tags are only issued when another car is purchased, and only then if the owner doesn't have a valid tag to transfer. Tags stay with their owner, not the car.

[ex-khobar Andy]

FUA 200 was originally registered in Leeds, Yorkshire. (Halfway up, right side.). The two letters 'UA' give the location; the F and the 200 are sequence letters. More info here. That page says it's for pre-1999 - I did check a number I recall from the 50s and it is accurate for that number. It's weird how I can recall the plate on my cousin's van from then, but I couldn't tell you what the number is on my Mazda on the driveway 30 feet from where I am sitting.

[Long Run]

Having a front plate at least doubles the chance of photo radar "nabbing" a speeding car.

We also don't have photo stop light or photo radar here. Never did. Many states have done away with it after it was discovered that the cities and states didn't "own" it. The company that did, got a cut of the fines. Kind of like a crooked sheriff or judge.

Here, while the company gets a cut of each ticket, the review is done by the police and courts, so in theory, there is no private interest incentive to get as many tickets as possible. I hate the things as they just create a dangerous "halo" zone where everyone slows down, clumps up, and then accelerates away from camera. That is, everyone except those who have a new car without a visible license, who are happy to speed through the camera, no doubt waving their favorite finger.

[ex-khobar Andy]

A serving Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and abduction and is being questioned by detectives.

PC Wayne Couzens has pleased guilty to kidnapping and rape. He has not yet entered a plea on a murder charge.

At one point Couzens served as an armed police officer. As you know, police in UK do not routinely carry firearms: but a fair percentage have been trained in their use.

[BoSoxGal]

The statistics being largely similar in the USA, the single most protective thing a woman can do to minimize her chances of being hurt or killed by a man is to never have a romantic relationship with one.

All the ways we can be vigilant and self protective while out and about in public are well and good, but nevertheless we are ~3x more likely to be harmed by a man we know intimately that by a man we’ve never met.

Banning men from the streets after 6pm won’t cut it.

[rubato]

Generally speaking:
Cost saving.
There are relatively few cases where a front plate is useful where a rear plate would not suffice.
To discourage people from standing in front of a speeding car trying to get a plate number.
...

I'm not sure how it is even possible to "stand in front of a speeding car" but I'd damn sure like to see it done.

yrs,
rubato