Number Plates News

Straight Up

13 April 2010

A recent amendment to Florida's licence plate legislation means that vertical number plates will be permitted on motor cycles. Previously, their use attracted wholly disproportionate fines, sometimes twice the penalty reserved for excessive speeding.

Bikers are delighted with this concession to common sense. Tom Steinbacher of Demon's Cycle Inc. says, "The outrage and efforts of many activists helped to overturn this rule. What a great outcome!"

It should be explained that the characters themselves are not arranged vertically. The plate is, to all intents and purposes, a standard construction simply mounted at 90 degrees. This is considered to be a far more aesthetically pleasing option to two-wheel aficionados, who have, up to now, been persecuted for adopting this neat and wholly sensible solution off their own bats.

In the UK, the familiar square yellow plates, with the registration arranged on two lines, are displayed only on the rear of a motor cycle. Since 2001, the requirement for a front plate was dropped because the double-sided, blade-like structure on the front mud-guard posed an extreme danger in the event of an accident.

Unless our Automatic Licence Plate recognition systems are adapted to read registrations from top to bottom, it seems highly unlikely that the Florida model will ever be accepted here.