ONE PLATE OR TWO?
The Benefits of Two License Plates
and the Costs of Removing One
LICENSE PLATES ARE SIMPLE SAFETY AND LAW
ENFORCEMENT TOOLS USED FOR:
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Vehicle identification
Reflectivity at night
Enforcing toll and parking fees
Enforcing vehicle registration laws
Stolen vehicle recovery
Criminal apprehension
Amber Alerts
Police officer safety: identifying vehicles at safe distance
National security
TWO LICENSE PLATES ARE BETTER THAN ONE
• Without a front license plate, law enforcement and
citizens lose a critical tool for working together to
ensure public safety:
– Revenues are lost
– Crimes go unsolved
– Criminals walk free
A LITTLE LICENSE PLATE HISTORY
• Before World War II, all American states required two plates
– A steel shortage brought on by the war triggered a switch to one plate
across most of the country.
– After the war ended, most states reverted to the two-plate requirement.
• In the late 1970s/early 1980s, four states went from two plates to
one, citing cost savings
– A few years later, two of those states returned to a two-plate requirement.
– Since then, no state has removed the front plate.
• Today, legislation has been proposed to remove the front plate
– States like Ohio, Wyoming and Texas are looking to reduce costs by issuing
just one plate for passenger vehicles.
– Car enthusiasts do not want to attach a license plate to the front bumpers
of their cars.
THE NATIONAL PICTURE TODAY
THE COST OF A LICENSE PLATE
• One license plate costs around $2.50.
– License plates are one of the most cost-effective tools for
protecting public safety.
– They provide law enforcement, neighborhood watch groups and
individual citizens with a quick and easy way to identify vehicles.
• The cost of manufacturing both plates is typically offset
by user fees.
– Each plate and registration sticker represents valuable state
revenue through registration fees.
But much more is lost when the front plate comes off.
SOME EXAMPLES OF FISCAL COSTS OF
REMOVING THE FRONT LICENSE PLATE
• $7.5 billion
– Annual monetary losses from motor vehicle thefts. A front plate
significantly increases the chances of these vehicles being identified.
• $23.1 million
– In 2012, Colorado reported that the E-470 corridor would have lost in
toll collection without front license plates.
• 539,000
– Approximate number of toll violations that could not be tracked or
their revenue recovered in Virginia in 2011—due to displaying rear
plates only.
Keeping front license plates means more revenue per year.
THE BENEFITS TO LAW ENFORCEMENT IN
KEEPING TWO LICENSE PLATES
A growing body of evidence supports the importance of license plates in protecting
public safety. Successful stories from sworn law enforcement officers themselves may
be among the most compelling.
In 2012, one officer, William E. Dempster of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police
Department (MPD) recorded the following successes from the field resulting from
license plate vehicle identification:
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EVERY DAY, FRONT LICENSE PLATES HELP
LAW ENFORCEMENT SOLVE CRIMES
• Since 1998, the International Association of Police Chiefs
(IACP) has sponsored Looking Beyond the License Plate,
an annual award program
– Law enforcement officers from across the country submit
stories in which license plates were used to solve serious crimes.
– To date, over two thousand of stories have been submitted.
– Roughly 2 in 10 of these stories describe a crime solved because
of the presence of a front license plate on a vehicle.
TWO LICENSE PLATES MAKE THE DIFFERENCE
Let’s keep the front plate where it belongs.
Learn more at: www.FRNTPL8.org