By Catherine Salerno
news@seacoastonline.com
The Portsmouth Herald
March 30, 2008 6:00 AM
To decipher many of the license plates on the road these days, you have to be CR8IVE, KWIK and ONURFT.
If it seems like there are an unusually high number of vanity plates in the state, it's because there are. New Hampshire is ranked second in the country for its percentage of vanity plates.
In 2007, a study was conducted to see who was the vainest state of all.
"Last November, the AAMVA and the author of LCNS2ROM conducted the first-ever state-to-state study of vanity plates," said Jason King, vice president of public relations and information services for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
The Commonwealth of Virginia came in at No. 1 with 16 percent of its license plates being vanity plates.
In New Hampshire, "13.99 percent of the vehicles ... have vanity plates. That comes to 171,438 in New Hampshire," King said.
..."I do believe that when we see that we have 9.7 million vehicles in the U.S. and Canada with vanity plates, that we have a cultural phenomenon," King said. "It says people have chosen to spend extra money to buy something that was not marketed to them, because by and large the DMVs don't market these."
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