DENA POTTER Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. - URSOVAIN Virginia.
You, too, New Hampshire, Illinois, Nevada and Montana.
A state-by-state survey of the popularity of vanity license plates has found that car and truck owners in Virginia are the vainest of them all.
Out of the 9.3 million personalized plates on the roads of America, about one in 10 are in Virginia, according to rankings provided to The Associated Press by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
That's 16 percent of the plates issued by Virginia. New Hampshire came in second with nearly 14 percent. Illinois had about 13.4 percent, but that amounted to nearly 1.3 million plates, the most of any state. New York was 35th on the list, with 287,382 vanity plates registered, just 2.43 percent of all plates issued.
"If you've got 9.3 million people across the U.S. sporting vanity plates, you've got a cultural phenomenon," AAMVA spokesman Jason King said.
Texas had the fewest, with only about a half percent of drivers personalizing their plates.
...Stefan Lonce calls it "minimalist poetry in motion" - telling a story in eight or fewer characters.
Lonce - author of the upcoming book "LCNS2ROM-License to Roam: Vanity Plates and the Stories They Tell" - worked with AAMVA to survey vehicle licensing agencies in each state.
"I think a lot of people have stories to tell and they really want pieces of those stories out there," said Lonce, who admits he initially thought it was silly for people to spend extra money to personalize their license plates.
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