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Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Ind. Gov't - "Indiana will make each license plate unique"
Well, I didn't know that!
Mary Beth Schneider reports today in the Indianapolis Star:
In the past, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles used duplicate numbers for different types of vehicles. For instance, a semitrailer truck might have the same number as a pickup truck, or a motorcycle might have the same number as a car.That worked fine in Indiana, where police knew to notice not just the number but the type of plate when issuing a ticket.
But Dennis Rosebrough, spokesman for the BMV, said the increased use of cameras in other states to nab motorists for driving through tolls without paying, or for running a red light, led to problems. Indiana motorists were getting tickets from places they'd never been.
To fix the problem, Rosebrough said, "We are going to never issue duplicate numbers again. We bagged that."
Fixing that problem, combined with a second change BMV instituted this year, ironically has led to some unhappy motorists.
Rosebrough said the Indiana State Police had asked the BMV to make specialty plates easier to read by using only full-sized letters next to the numbers on plates. Until now, specialty plates have had two small letters on each plate, one on top of the other.
But because the BMV also is going to unique numbers, that has meant some people who had a particular letter-number combination on a specialty plate can't have that, as it is already being used by another vehicle.
Rosebrough said the BMV will have made the switch to the nonduplicate numbers by the end of this year, and next year will replace all the specialty plates with the small, stacked letters.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 17, 2010 10:52 AM
Posted to Indiana Government