risqué driving What's on your license plate? For an annual fee of about $40, you can replace the random letters and numbers with something that reflects your personality. If you talk like you drive, don't expect your first choice. Department of Motor Vehicle officials take a dim view of sexual innuendo or salty language. They also aren't keen on ethnic slurs, drug slang, or messy politics.
Personalized license plates may not be the most pressing issue facing the First Amendment, but they're still a battleground. California has turned down requests for HIVPOS and HIVNEG but allowed ENDHIV. In Oregon, the DMV declined to renew a plate that read 69. The owner had moved it from a '69 Ford to a '76 Ford. The DMV said that changed the plate's "context." In Florida, the DMV turned down a renewal request for YOMAMMA, ruling it objectionable and obscene. The motorist then asked for URASPAZ, which was also turned down.
Many DMVs will pull personalized plates off the road after a single complaint. That's what happened in San Diego, where a Japanese-American police officer notified the DMV after spotting a plate that read RAPNJAP. It had been issued to Robin Arnett Petty and his wife, Judy Ann Petty, who lost a legal battle to keep it.
The California DMV, which receives 10,000 requests a month for personalized plates, says state law bans configurations that might offend someone, for whatever reason. That's a broad mandate. To fulfill it, the Special Plate Unit checks every application against a list of tens of thousands of forbidden configurations compiled over the past 28 years. When a DMV official had called the list "a compendium of indecency," we knew we had to see it. The DMV sent it along and posted a searchable version online.
Below are some of the more interesting plates. If any give you trouble, think phonics. And drive safely.

updates

In September 2007 the Oregon DMV revoked three license plates owned by the Udink family — UDINK1, UDINK2 and UDINK3 — saying that after review, they had been found to have several "derogatory meanings," one of them sexual and the other a racial slur for Asians. "Since when can a panel dictate whether your name's offensive or not?" asked Mike Udink.

visitor feedback

From Bruce Jennings:
My favorite: SWAF, seen on a car in Oregon. I bet the DMV thought the guy was doing a cute thing on being "suave and debonair." I think he acronymized sealed with a kiss wrong.

From Diana Hickson:
In 2007 the California DMV went after my sweetheart because someone had complained that his vanity plate GO 2 11 (of Spinal Tap fame) could be read as "Go to Hell." This is more amazing in that I once snapped a photo in Sacramento of this plate that the DMV apparently didn't find objectionable: