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I drive past a house each day on my commute. There are two cars parked in the drive, and each appears to have the exact same vanity plate (from the same state). It's a six-letter word, such as COWBOY. As far as I know, each license plate in a given state should be absolutely unique, so how can this be? And since the vehicles are parked in plain view, wouldn't any law enforcement officer driving by be likely to see them and investigate?

The only possible explanation I can come up with is that since license plates in this state can have 7 characters, perhaps one plate is in the system as _COWBOY and the other as COWBOY_. But they look identical. Could an extra space before or after a word in a vanity plate be used to make 2 unique plates out of the same single word?

abelenky
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nuggethead
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1 Answers1

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Made up words (but close enuff), but I know a person who has "HISPEED and "HI SPEED" on two of his cars in Virginia. Same plate design.

Details matter.

And H1SPEED and HISPEED are also 2 different combinations.

From the Virginia DMV, all it says is that the characters must be "unique". The style of plate does not enter into it.

"Personalized character combinations for license plates registered to a vehicle must be unique."

dmv.virginia.gov/vehicles/license-plates/personalized-policy

WPNSGuy
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