Story Created:
May 15, 2008 at 4:40 PM EDT
Story Updated:
May 16, 2008 at 6:08 PM EDT
FORT MYERS, Fla. - Personalized license plates: 460 thousand of them cruise Florida highways, making money for the state, and sometimes making you chuckle. With so many personalized license plates on Florida roads, some inappropriate messages are bound to slip through. We wanted to know how many.
Florida has two committees to review complaints on license plates. We asked for list of plates the state has reviewed. We received a list of 1600 plates. That's how we found Cape Coral driver Nick Libretto. "Basically someone saw it one time and said due to what all is going on in the world with fighting and killing they didn't think it was appropriate," says Nick. He thinks his plate LIC2KIL says something about his job as the owner of ABC Pest Control. "Kinda thought it was cute. Especially being in the pest control business. And you do have a license to kill bugs so people kind of thought it was real cute," says Libretto.
The state reviewed the complaint and agreed with Nick.
The Division of Motor Vehicles review procedures say the state only rejects obscene and objectionable license plates. By objectionable, they mean anything expressing a feeling of disapproval, dislike, hatred, violence or a threat toward a person or group. By obscene, they mean anything indecent, lewd, abominable, disgusting, a slur, profanity or a description of body parts.
So when you look at Jennifer McBlaine's plate SEX PHD, you may wonder how it got through. "They weren't going to approve it because of the word sex," says McBlaine. But as a licensed sex therapist, she could prove it wasn't indecent. "I can prove to them I have my PhD in it and they approved it," says McBlaine.
The committee also approved the tag on Monte Jones' new car OBITEME. Jones told WINK News "Apparently they did not find it offensive. That just means I'm having a little bit of fun."
Document: You can click here to download the entire list of plates reviewed by the committee. Know that by clicking here, many of them are obscene and objectionable, that's why they're on this list. Just so you know, two committees review the plates. The letters next to the plates mean what they decided. A= Accepted, D=Complaint Denied, R=Reject/Recall, TIE= the committee tied on vote, U= the previous decision was upheld, and O=Overturned.