I can’t think of a reason for the extra hassle and expense.
Montana has number prefixes by county. Fun for plate spotting and intercounty ribbing. Though anyone can just get vanity plate if they wanted.
Don’t know if there’s much reason for it, but plates and registrations are administered by each county Treasury office.
My guess is plate assignment/registration was delegated to county offices from the start.
Probably something to do with how poorly educated they are.
To make more work and be inefficient
Big government money wasting liberals
In Mississippi lol
My speculation is based on who hands them out.
- states I’m familiar with do not show county. Plates are handed out by a DMV/RMV, which is a state agency
- for those states that show county, are the plates handed out by a county level agency?
In GA, the state oversees vehicle registration but the counties actually do the tax collection/license plate issuance. For reference we have counties on our plates
My WAG would be that they need more busywork for the prisoners.
Wait, other states don’t? I dunno, I live in Mississippi, I always thought the other states did the same. Guess I never really paid that much attention.
If it counts for anything, at least Mississippi doesn’t require two tags, one for the back and one for the front, they only require the rear tag.
Also, our vehicles don’t require inspections anymore, which is both a bonus for your wallet, and also very frightening when you realize how many vehicles out there are on the verge of brake failure or something equally dangerous.
Oklahoma only has back plates but not for each county and no inspections but that is a bad thing not good. Allows shitty cars to remain on the road.
I’m in Louisiana. We have inspections but I don’t believe the actually matter. Take a quick walk through any parking lot and you’ll find tons of cars that have both valid stickers and glaringly obvious problems that should keep them off the road.
Indiana is the same, rear only, no inspections. Our counties are numbered by alphabetical order and that number is on the plate to differentiate, but the plates are the same.
I was pretty certain Florida did. At least when I lived there decades ago…
My Florida tags didn’t have a county listed, but my Tennessee ones do. Looking more into it, it appears Florida allows you to have it say your county, Sunshine State, or In God We Trust.
Everyone I knew just had sunshine state, figured they were all like that unless you got a custom tag
County names on the license plate is only a thing in some southern states. All other states just show the state.
What state requires a front and rear tag? Seems excessive?
Cars should have both, so they can be uniquely identified both coming and going.
For example when you run over a road pedestrian by not stopping for a red light, as he sees you coming and jumps out of the way he might see your plate, whereas once you’ve run over him, cracked his hips and given him a concussion he may not be able to read your rear plate
Yeah but my question was for tags not plates
I see that was added to the conversation: so weird to have opposite terminology. I’ve always heard “tags” refer to the plates, never the registration sticker
I think most states, I can at least speak for New England and most of the East coast.
I know PA is rear only, but most all of our neighbors have both.
All of the Northeast.
California requires front and rear plates.
But not tags at least not 8 years ago when I still lived there
The whole west coast does.
Maryland does.
I think most countries require front and rear plates. I find it odd yours is kind of 50/50.
It’s more like 40/60, thank you very much.
It varies in Canada
It sounds like maybe you’re talking about the registration decal when you say “tag”.
Virginia requires them on both front and rear plates.
Yeah maybe it’s me but I’ve never heard someone call a licence plate a tag before…
I don’t think it’s just you, but I’d never heard someone refer to the registration decal as a tag before you.
I asked ChatGPT in the most neutral way I could think what “tag” meant in relation to motor vehicles just to get an aggregate perspective on what the internet at large says and it turns out both are definitely common:
I wonder if it’s geographic or what. Its odd to me that we both had only encountered one usage and it was the opposite
Well that could explain a lot of what is so confusing at least to me…
In response to your other comments, yes I should have said plates instead of tags. Here in MS, they’re basically one and the same, every year you stick a new tag sticker on your plate.
Oh, by the way, here in Mississippi, when you go to get a license plate, the office you go to is the tag office.
Same thing, at least here anyways.
Every place I’ve been it’s either the DMV or RMV which isn’t a lot of places but still… Some places the tag goes on your car window not your license plate like NJ
MN requires plates on both sides and when you renew your registration they give you tabs for both sides too. It doesn’t make much sense to me to require plates on both sides if you are only going to put the tabs on one side.
Also, our vehicles don’t require inspections anymore, which is both a bonus for your wallet, and also very frightening when you realize how many vehicles out there are on the verge of brake failure or something equally dangerous.
I like how you supported small government a d then realized why it was small and what’s at stake, in the same sentence.
Meanwhile European license plates being standardized across the whole Union.
Your guys’ are prettier to look at, whilst ours are all about the intended function. Not sure which approach I like more.
So you don’t have to go over to the next county just to eat dinner
If they didn’t spend all that money on different license plates for each county, they have to spend it on education and we all know that sure shit don’t want to do that.
Maybe so police can pull people over from out of county
You ain’t from around here are you, boy? We don’t allow that sort of thing here in Bumfuck County.
That would assume things like lynchings still happen in Mississippi.
Yep, police out there are predatory as fuck. They know it’s low income and they’ll harass any poor soul they can.
Iowa also has county names on their plates as well. I think it is probably a mix of:
- that’s how we’ve always done it
- kinda cool to see where people are from and display where you’re from
- makes it easier to spot “out of place” cars for suspicion/police reasons (bleh, probably helpful in racial profiling too. pessimistic take…)
Also just guesses.
I don’t understand this question at all.
The consensus seems to have fallen on vehicle license plates / registration tags / whatever they’re called wherever you might be, and it was also my first guess, even though I’m not from the US. That said, I do watch a few things on YouTube that might have primed me to think of those first and not any other kind of plate.
TL;DR: OP’s probably not talking about crockery.
I don’t understand what OP is asking either, even with the upvoted response to your comment. What do Mississippi license plates look like?
I live in a different state, and we have the option to have either our state’s motto on our plate, or the county that we live in. I chose the county that I live in. When I drive around, I see many others displaying the county that they live in as well. Is Mississippi’s system similar to this? I don’t understand why it would be a hassle on the part of the state to print different license plates for different people. They already do that anyway… I don’t get how that would be using excessive resources.
When I have to renew my vehicle registration, it is either done online, within kiosks at certain grocery stores, or at a government building within the county I live. It doesn’t seem like a confusing or weird system at all to me. But again, I don’t know how it works in Mississippi.
I’m British, but I’m genuinely interested in how “number plates” as we call them, work in different countries.
What’s a tag then? Cause I thought that was a license plate…
This is a number plate, just in case you’re interested.
Edit, just wanted to add….its yellow for the back, white for front, and you have to have both.
The tag is the registration tag, it’s visible proof that the car is on register with the state(s) and is legal to be on the road
Instead of “number plate”, we call it either a “license plate” or just a “plate”. Some states require both front and rear plates, while others only require a single rear plate.
A “tag” is a small registration sticker that is updated/changed every so many years for proof that your vehicle registration is current. The “tag” is often placed on your license plate itself, but some states put the tag on the windshield instead. Some other states don’t actually have any tag stickers that need to be placed anywhere on your vehicle even though your vehicle still needs to be registered.
I think the confusion is arising because a user here is referring to their license plate as a “tag”. In my experience, this is not common word usage. I’ve never heard of anyone refer to a vehicle tag as anything other than the registration sticker. But just because it’s not common in the places I’ve been doesn’t mean that people don’t use the word that way.
