Just As I Thought

“Michael, my door is ah-jah.”

There was a great commercial for AT&T on last night during Lost, it featured robotic, digital voices through history. One of the voices was of KITT, the car in Knight Rider.
Am I the only one who noticed that KITT was registered in Virginia, and had a Virginia inspection sticker on his windshield? I had no idea that KITT was living in my home state.
Just an interesting bit of trivia on cultural differences — here in California, cars don’t have stickers on the windshield. In Virginia, you have two: the county tax sticker and the state inspection sticker. I left my Arlington county sticker on for nostalgia purposes; people here are puzzled by it and peer closely to see what it is.
Cars also don’t need license plate stickers on the front plate here — in fact, I don’t think you even need the front plate.
Ironically, in Virginia hybrid cars get a Clean Fuel license plate which allows access to car pool lanes. In California, that’s too easy: you have to fill out forms, pay fees, buy transponders, and then stick 3 ugly fluorescent stickers on your car for that privilege.

2 comments

  • >Cars also don’t need license plate stickers on the front plate here — in fact, I don’t think you even need the front plate

    Are you being sarcastic?

    Because if not, you’re repeating one of the biggest myth’s in california.

    Heck, the DMV even requires brackets to be included by the vendor: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d05/vc11713_17.htm

    Ever since moving here I’ve been incredibly perplexed by populus of California to oppose this. Like this is somehow the biggest sin the government has created (after the car tax).

    In NY this was totally non-issue. But here… well… http://www.petitiononline.com/caplate/petition.html

  • Well, when I first titled my car in California, I was given two license plates but only one set of registration stickers. I asked the guy if I was missing stickers, having been used to Virginia’s “front and back” style; he said that you were only required to have plates and stickers on the back of the car. Still, I have plates on both sides (but only one sticker, on the back).
    Looks like even DMV employees don’t know the law, then.

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