Blacktop Jungle: Blue-Plate Special

I see Uncle Harris has changed the design of the license plates again. I saw two of the new plates the other day. You may recall the big hullabaloo in 1999 when the Commonwealth began issuing plates with its Website URL on the bottom of them:

The idea was that no matter where Pennsylvanians went in the United States, people would see our URLs and say, "Ooh! Isn't Pennsylvania spiffy! They know what the Internet is!"

Meanwhile, the reason that the Pennsylvanians were in the other states was because they were moving the heck out of Pennsylvania, but that, as they say in the circus, is rear elephant.

Well, at least a few police officers have told me that the typeface of the word "PENNSYLVANIA" was hard to read on that light blue background, and that they looked too much like a West Virginia license plate to be easily distinguished at a distance:

Apparently, their complaints have been heard. The great minds of PennDOT put their shoulders to the wheel, and promptly got stuck in a pothole, but then they put the wheel back on the road and came up with the new Pennsylvania license plates:

You'll notice that "PENNSYLVANIA" is a bolder typeface and on a darker blue background which doesn't fade out, like the old plates did. Also, the gold at the bottom of the plates is darker and doesn't fade to white.

I have no strong opinions on the new design one way or the other. It's kind of dull-looking, though. If they wanted a license plate that was easy to read from a distance and instantly identifiable, they should have gone back to this one:

For crying out loud, it's shaped like the state of Pennsylvania. How much more identifiable could it be?

It could be worse, and it's about to get much, much worse, in fact. The Commonwealth has just announced a special licensing deal with the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing --- you've heard of them, right? --- to put the names and numbers of NASCAR drivers on Pennsylvania plates.

Which means that pretty soon, you're going to be seeing plates like this one:

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. There's no "Dick Trickle" plate yet, but I'm hopeful.

The proliferation of speciality license plates is really becoming problematic, I think. I don't even know if I would mind a plate that said something generic like "AUTO RACING" --- maybe with a checkered flag on it --- but branding it with the NASCAR logo seems to be a bit too much. (Yes, I know, a "portion of the fees" from each NASCAR license plate goes to charity. I'll bet PennDOT spends more in one day for soap in the washrooms at the I-79 Welcome Center.) Once you brand the plates with "NASCAR," can "SpongeBob SquarePants" license plates be far behind? How about Nike? Adidas?

Besides, we already have enough nitwits driving Route 30 at 90 mph as they live out their NASCAR fantasies. Now they're going to demand banked curves. They had just better watch out for the walls, that's all. Turn, damn you, turn!

(1999 and 2005 Pennsylvania tag images courtesy John McDevitt's "PA Plates" Website. West Virginia tag and 1970 Pennsylvania tag from "Nick's Pl8s." Dale Earnhardt plate courtesy PennDOT Office of Driver and Vehicle Services.)

(P.S.: If you get one of those new plates, I'll bet they'd look really good with one of these.)