Who's so Vain?
ARLINGTON, VA - More than 9.7 million American and Canadian motor vehicles are embellished with personalized vanity license plates, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) and Stefan Lonce, author of LCNS2ROM - License To Roam: Vanity License Plates And The Stories They Tell, a forthcoming book about the vanity plate phenomenon.
"Vehicle license plates are as common today as the vehicles on our roads," said Neil Schuster, president and CEO, AAMVA. "But what is uncommon is the great number of individuals who have chosen to use these plates as a form of personal expression. Each vanity plate tells a unique story, known only by the vehicle's owner, which remains a mystery for others to decode."
"When I began working on LCNS2ROM, I was amazed to learn that no one knew how many Americans and Canadians have chosen to 'vanitize,' which means 'to embellish a motor vehicle with vanity license plates,'" said Lonce. "Vanity plates are minimalist poetry in motion. Vanity plates are powerful message platforms that allow motorists to tell compelling or funny stories in eight or fewer characters. And vanity plates are fun."
The AAMVA-LCNS2ROM Vanity Plates Survey found that 9,292,843 American motor vehicles, and 440,148 Canadian vehicles, currently display vanity plates. The survey also ranks jurisdictions by "vanity plate penetration rate," which is the percentage of registered motor vehicles that are vanitized.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, there were 242,991,747 privately owned and commercial registered automobiles, trucks and motorcycles in the U.S. in 2005, which means that 3.83% of eligible American vehicles are vanitized. Every state and the District of Columbia issues vanity plates. Virginia has the highest American vanity plate penetration rate (16.19 percent), followed by N.H. (13.99 percent), Ill. (13.41 percent), Nev. (12.73 percent), Mont. (9.8 percent), Maine (9.79 percent), Conn. (8.14 percent), N.J. (6.88 percent), N.D. (6.51 percent) and Vt. (6.11 percent). Texas has the lowest vanity plate penetration rate (.56 percent).
Individual state and provincial survey results are available online at www.lcns2rom.com and www.aamva.org. Drivers interested in submitting their vanity plate story for consideration in LCNS2ROM, should visit www.lcns2rom.com.
(Source: American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators)
