Illinois - nuts on license plates

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
January 21, 2014

Reading Cal Skinner's McHenry County Blog this afternoon, I found several items in his continuing stories about new laws in Illinois.

Some of these items today pertained to new license plate descriptions you can expect to see on our roads. A few of them are wild turkey hunters, diabetes awareness, Alzheimer’s awareness, nurses, the Red Cross, the Illinois Police Association, retired law enforcement officers, the H Foundation-Committed to a Cure for Cancer, public safety drivers, K-9 Memorial, and Prince Hall Masons.

Illinois, along with many other states, has moved deeper into the list of stupid decision-makers with the large number of special plates. It's getting so you cannot even read the plate number on some of them.

And, if Illinois runs true to form, a person can get the same plate number/name in different categories. An example of this struck home a few years ago when I found that an unpaid toll violation was marked against my license plate, MR GUS. Somebody "out there" has a passenger car plate with this on it (this is my motorcycle license plate), and he had run a toll on the Edens. The Illinois Tollway quickly corrected its records when I called, and that was the last I heard of it.

If you report a hit-and-run and give the plate number but not the category for the plate, the cops are going to experience a delay in finding the car. My preference would be to do away with all the special categories (and special fees). The purpose of a license plate is to be able to identify a vehicle, not for a decoration or to suck more money out of vehicle owners.\