Newly issued license plates in Washington will have 7 characters, starting in November
Posted By Joe Turner on October 7, 2009 at 3:51 pm
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There already are 7 digits on some commercial vehicles, I think. Soon, personal cars and SUVs will have 7-digit license plates, a combination of letters and numbers.
Factoid: 7 digits will allow for 350 million different combinations. (At the rate cars are selling these days (post Cash for Clunkers) that might be good for several hundred centuries.
Passenger vehicle license plate number configuration changing
OLYMPIA—The Department of Licensing (DOL) is in the process of changing the configuration of numbers on general issue passenger vehicle license plates.
Passenger vehicle license plate numbers, assigned to personal cars and sport-utility vehicles, are currently made up of three numbers followed by three letters (111-AAA). In November or early December motorists will begin seeing a new seven-character plate configuration consisting of a number, a letter, two more numbers and then three letters (1A11AAA).
Neighborhood vehicle licensing offices around the state will begin issuing the new seven-character plates after exhausting their stock of the current six-character plates. This means the new plates will be available at different times in different locations around the state.“The decision to use a seven-character plate number wasn’t made in haste,” DOL Director Liz Luce said. “We began studying our options years ago and carefully considered our requirements, the needs of law enforcement, and configurations that have been successful in other states.”
DOL chose a seven-character configuration similar to one used in California because it provides a very large number of possible combinations and doesn’t conflict with any plates already issued. After subtracting combinations DOL does not plan to issue, this configuration offers more than 350,000,000 possible plate numbers.
License plates with seven characters are not new. Trucks and commercial vehicles have had seven digit license plates for years. Personalized license plates, also known as vanity plates, have always been available with seven characters.
The overall appearance of the passenger vehicle plates will not change. They will still feature the standard mountain background currently in use.
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Save Time — Go Online. The Department of Licensing has a wide variety of consumer services available online. Please visit our website at www.dol.wa.gov.
Washington, the new old california.
Couldn't we have just had a drawing (like Lotto) and decided which half of the cars out there we could crush and recycle? You know, death to clunkers. That is the only way we could eliminate an awful lot of frustration driving (or idling) across the county. Besides that it would have saved the consultants fee for thinking up the 7th digit or letter. It would have saved millions that could go for pedestrians injuries.
If we didn't have to replace our plates every 7 years, we wouldn't have had to go to this combination so soon.
And this will cost how much to reconfigure the equipment and training and databases? Are we at the absolute end of the current system? You mean it does not have a few years left to ride out the budget crisis? There are not unused numbers that can now be recycled after long amounts of no use/no license? This on the surface looks to be an absolute waste of money.