While it might seem like police don’t care about your license plate as long as they can see the number, that is far from the truth. A California Highway Patrol officer pulled over a Nissan Sentra driver after noticing something was off with her license plate. After a closer inspection, he realized that it was a homemade plate bolted to the sedan’s rear end. According to the Los Angeles Times, the driver received a $197 fine for driving without proper plates.
Despite its lack of authenticity, the homemade license plate has a certain degree of charm. The photo shared by CHP on Facebook showed the hand-drawn nature of the lettering. Like many of us amateurs, the “038” at the end of the number is bunched together because this artist didn’t realize how little plate was left to work with. Poor kerning aside, the details have to be praised. The registration sticker in the top-right corner, a reinterpretation of the iconic California script above the number, and the DMV’s web address at the bottom are all pretty good. The Facebook post jokingly opened with the line, “We’ll give this driver points for creativity.” The plate is good enough that I would put it up on my wall alongside the citation.
California allows drivers to replace paint with pixels
Art might be priceless, but a replacement license plate in California is only $27. I don’t want to assume anyone’s financial situation, but things can’t be great if you need to strap a tire to the deck lid of your Nissan Sentra. If you do have the cash, you could spend $900 on a digital license plate from Reviver. The sanctioned display offers a wide variety of instant customization features through a smartphone app. However, a digital plate isn’t the most secure piece of technology. California launched a pilot program for digital license plates in 2018, followed by a full rollout in 2022. However, the rollout wasn’t flawless. Researchers in 2023 were able to hack into Reviver’s plate, gaining access to the user’s GPS location and personal information.
Some drivers have also hacked their own Revivor plates to change their number at will to avoid paying tickets and tolls. Reviver patched the previously mentioned exploit and noted that jailbreaking your own plate is a crime, but I’m sticking with old-fashioned plates for now.
