By Summer Harlow
Delaware's environmental license plates with a lighthouse and duck aren't exactly attractive to Ed Lewandowski.
After all, he said, it's not like a mallard symbolizes the organizations the specialty plates support -- the Center for the Inland Bays and the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.
"Maybe it should be a horseshoe crab; that's our logo," said Lewandowski, executive director of the Inland Bays center. "I don't have one of these plates. No one on staff does. I think that's why there's interest in redesigning it. If it was a horseshoe crab, or something reflective of the organization, I think we'd all have one."
For Delawareans bored with the standard blue-and-yellow plates, or unable to afford a coveted low-digit black-and-white tag, the First State offers a whopping 87 specialty and organizational plates, such as the environmental ones, to give drivers a way to personalize their vehicles without coming up with a clever vanity tag.
"Everyone's got a story to tell, but most people think they don't have a platform to tell their story or get their message across," said Stefan Lonce, author of the forthcoming book "License to Roam: Vanity License Plates and the Stories They Tell." "But guess what? Everyone does, and it's the bumper of your car."
And the number of plates to choose from keeps increasing. That despite the fact the specialty and organizational plates appeal to a relatively small number of Delaware drivers: 6 percent, or about 52,000 of the state's 850,000 registered vehicles, have such tags, according to the Delaware Department of Transportation.
...Delaware ranks 36th in the nation, with about 2.4 percent of vehicles boasting vanity plates, said Jason King of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. In the United States, about 9.3 million cars sport vanity tags.
"People are so passionate about their own personal story they're willing to pay the state their own money to tell their story in eight characters or less," he said.
Lonce, the author, said he doesn't like the term "vanity" plate.
"The general public tends to dismiss vanity plates as vain, or cute or droll," Lonce said. "But these are stories rolling down the street in front of you."
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