By Dena Potter, Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. URSOVAIN Virginia.
You, too, New Hampshire and Illinois.
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 all.
Out of the 9.3 million personalized plates on the roads of America, about 1 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.
"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 half a percent of that state's 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 the association 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.
...Others are personal, like those of Ally and Rudy Masry of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
She donated a kidney to her husband in 2003, so her car has the tag DONOR and his reads DONEE.
But why does Virginia have so many personalized plates?
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