Running out of space

California is always one step ahead of the rest of us. Now I read that they are considering digital auto license plates. When your car has been at a stop for four seconds, your license plate will change. Instead of showing the same old boring number, it will flash a paid advertisement for the amusement and edification of the driver waiting behind you. When you again begin to move, the plate will switch back to displaying your license number.

I'm trying to think of any possible way in which that might sound like a good idea. (Of course, our state up here in the Northwest isn't yet bankrupt.) Aside from providing a revenue source, I see only reasons to avoid like the plague the idea of any commercial bearing license plates.

I'm confused enough by the new seven figure plates now being issued by Washington. Because of the legislature's recent requirement that our plates be replaced every seven years, together with our spiraling population growth, we have now run through all 17,576,000 three-letter, three-number combinations. So the Department of Licensing is now starting to issue seven-character plates.

Back in the day, Washinton's plates bore a letter followed by several numbers. The format was a simple but elegant system. Our 39 counties were ranked by population and assigned a letter code, from King County (Seattle) with an A, to Pierce County (Tacoma) with a B, to Spokane County (duh!) with a C, and so on. The smallest counties were assigned double letter combinations (e.g., San Juan County (Friday Harbor) with an SJ) -- but the population of those counties was so small that one would rarely encounter double letter plates. (Photo to the left shows an F license, representing Whatcom County(Bellingham), the sixth most populous county at whatever date the system was initiated .)

Then we copied California, and went to a three-letter, three-number format. We preserved the county code system, incorporating it into the three letter combination. ARG 130 would be King County. SJB 248 would be San Juan County. GKH 162, pictured below, came from Clark County (Vancouver).

Learning the county codes and identifying the counties of cars seen on the highway was a good way for a 10 or 12 year old to keep himself amused while sitting in the back seat as the family drove across the state.Finally, however, King County exhausted all the A combinations. It expanded into the O's and then the I's -- letters that originally had not been assigned, because of their resemblance to zeros and ones.

Finally, the whole county identification system became unworkable, due to the disproportionate growth of Seattle and other cities in the Puget Sound area compared with other parts of the state. The system was scrapped, and licenses began being issued sequentially, regardless of county. For a while, the plates were reissued every five years or so, reversing colors each time they were reissued: green on white, then white on green. In 1976, we celebrated the bicentennial by switching to red, white and blue. We've never looked back, and we've never had a general reissue of plates since that date.

To me, a decent numbering system results in a plate number that I can remember after someone has driven me into a ditch, or has hit me and run. Obviously, the four or five digit numbers of yesteryear were easiest to recall, but three letters and three numbers, separated by a dash, also stuck in my find fairly well.

Adding just one more number, however, crowds the plate to overflowing. Beyond the fact that seven characters are harder to remember than six, the fact that the seven are packed together with no separation between letters and numbers makes the combination almost impossible to read in an emergency situation, or to remember later.

And I really don't think adding a commercial for Preparation H into the mix would help matters.