The Seattle Times’ Top 20 most read news stories has placed a story about a number plate as the fifth most read online article for 2005.
Why all the fuss about a personalised number plate? Well, the registration mirrored the formula used by chemists for identifying common narcotics.
The plate, C9H13N – a label for chemicals such as meths – was first seen on a black Audi, cruising around the streets of Seattle. Because of the chances of the general public knowing that the plate contains a reference to drugs, and because the formula also applies to compounds used in legal medicines such as amphetamine, the owner had so far managed to avoid legal action and revocation of the plate – successfully bypassing the US Department of Licensing state regulations.
These stringent guidelines govern the granting of vanity applications, clearly stating that the application will be rejected if it relates to alcohol or illegal activities or substances.
I wonder if our very own DVLA would have spotted this? To be fair, it’s an obscure case.
"It’s pretty easy for something like this to slip through"
said a spokesman for the department.
"With a series of letters and numbers, if you’re not a chemist it doesn’t ring a bell."
Either way, it shows just how personalised, and how popular, number plates have become.
It’s fun to speculate on the type of owner of this plate: a fast, downtown drug dealer with a wad of cash, or a modest chemist paying homage to a popular class of compounds?
Either way, if he were to emigrate here to the UK, he could be sure of finding his perfect formula for a UK number plate using our number plate search.
