Taking Licence?

Again, I saw something on the eastbound 401 the other day that I have never seen before.

It was on a black Chevrolet HHR - Chevy's answer to the PT Cruiser.

I noticed as I was catching up to it that something was flapping around near the rear licence plate.

As I got closer I realized that what was flapping was the entire outer surface of the plate. It appeared to be a thin transparent plastic film, and the blue characters seemed to be attached to it, rather than to the plate itself.

Last time I looked - just this minute - licence plates still appear to be stamped from steel, with the letters and numbers embossed and painted right on them.

So, what was this?

Because I was driving, I couldn't get a picture of it (that's a stock photo up there). And even if I could have, we aren't supposed to identify local licence plates without asking permission of the vehicle owners.

You'll have to take my word for it.

It's not like this was one of the older three digit/three letter plates, many of which I have seen recently with virtually all of the blue paint for the characters eroded off them.

Sure, that means a free ride on the 407. But how do these guys not get stopped by the police? The plates have obviously been in use for a long, long time.

It also seems to be only the identifying letters and numbers that fade, not the 'Yours to Discover' part.

But I digress..

No, the HHR's plate was a relatively new four letters/three digits one, and the first letter was a 'B', which is the most recent series.

But there were those characters, flapping in the breeze.

I wondered if maybe this was some sort of scam, that the guy had fabricated a phony plate to cover up his real one.

If so, he hadn't done a very good job of it.

Or maybe the reflective white coating that covers the plates is actually a thin film to which the charcaters are attached, and which in this case had de-laminated?

I dunno.

Still, like those folks with faded characters on their plates, how does this guy drive around without getting stopped by the cops?

Comments

[Brian]

Jim, I saw another Ontario plate like that while driving home from Florida. Perhaps there is some sort of defect? I would assume they paint the plate white first, then paint the blue over top. So if the white paint lets go, you have the result you describe.
The license plate guard may be all that's holding the paint on. Of course when you stop, everything goes back to it's normal spot, more or less. Some drivers just don't pay enough attention to the state of their vehicles to realize that something is out of place.

[Merrill Smith]

A friend of mine was told a couple of years ago that his plate was too hard to read and should be replaced. I don't think he was ordered to replace it, and it didn't look too bad to me. Since then I have seen many that are completely unreadable and I've asked myself the question you are posing in this column. I guess the answer is the police can't be bothered. Too busy looking for speeders.

[Paul Gargaro]

Jim,there are dozens of these "phantom plates" that I see in my travels through Richmond Hill.
There seems to be a total lack of will on the part of the various Police "Services" to enforce anything in the G.T.A. save for speeding, seat belt, and parking infractions.
There is no police presence whatsoever during rush hour.
There is no one warning, let alone ticketing cars, pedestrians or cyclists with respect to the "rules of the road". Just this morning, I saw a 50 c.c. Vespa ride/drive right by a police officer IN THE BIKE LANE. He didn't even flinch, or flash or sound a horn or siren, he just let the offender get on with their illegal proceedings.
I asked him at the next traffic light if he noticed the offending Vespa, his answer was simply "Yes".

We have one of the highest police officers per capita counts, spend a huge portion of our gov't budgets on "police services" and yet we have chaos on the roads, fraudulent behaviour in in insurance claims and a blatant disregard for the safety of others, starting with that Toronto Police Service Officer from this morning.

Please excuse my rant...

Keep it up Jim!

[Amazing]

I have the same license plate for 26 years, no fading of any blue colour.
unless those illegible plates were issued way before me......
yet they all have 4 alphabets plus 3 numbers...Mine is only 3 plus 3