France Says Goodbye to the License Plate Game

Remember when your children were small how much fun it was to play the license plate game? The kids in the back seats (before they had to be safety-belted down) used to vie with each other about who could most quickly could spot a new plate on an approaching car. There’s a Nebraska plate. There’s one from Pennsylvania. There’s one from Florida. No. That doesn’t count. We’ve already got a Florida. Up until late April this year you could play the same game in France where the last two numbers on a French license plate identified from which one of France’s different  “Departments,” somewhat like U.S. states, the car was coming. There’s a 13. That’s from around Marseilles in the south on the Mediterranean.  There’s a 67. That’s from the Strasbourg area on the border with Germany. Or, more often, there’s a 75. That car’s from Paris. Better be careful. Parisians are crazy drivers. Besides, we already have a lot of those. In France you can’t do that anymore, not with any certainty. To put into effect a license system that would more easily and surely trace ownership of a car, France decided this year to do away with it’s old numbering system which it claimed anyway was clogged to the full. The old one–usually four digits followed by two letters and then those two department-identifying numbers— required re-registration and a new license plate if the owner’s department changed.  The new one assigns to every new or used car sold a number for life even if there is a change in ownership or location The new code has two letters, three numbers, then two more letters—AA-123-AA, for example—that its creators say has so many possible identifying combinations that it won’t need revision for at least 40 years. Of course, for those new and owner-transferred cars, it also won’t signal to anyone except perhaps police computer experts, the department where the car is registered.  There goes the old license plate game. Well, not quite. Because there was such an outcry from French car owners emotionally attached to their license plate’s identification with their department, the way a Texan would be to his Texas license plate, French officials made a last minute concession before the new code went into effect April 15. In addition to an obligatory star-studded European Community symbol and a capital F for France on the left, each new license plate now will also have, on its extreme right side, a regional and departmental identifying symbol.  The only problem is that those identifiers are simply a matter of the car owner’s choice, not necessarily an indicator of where the car is registered. That allows, for instance, a died-in-the-wool native of Brittany on France’s Atlantic coast to put that symbol on his license plate even if he lives and drives in Paris or some other French region. The only thing that matters is the driver’s sentimental or historical attachment to the region he chooses. And the car owner can change the choice at will. All this will take some time to sift down into an orderly new license plate identification system because cars on the road now with old-system don’t have to change them.  The official calculation is that, eventually, those cars, due simply due to old age, or ownership change, will disappear from the road. In the meantime, however, although it won’t be as easy, French kids or motoring tourists in France still can play an adulterated version of the license plate game. They still can spot the regional or department identifier on the right of a car’s license plate and not worry about whether it’s a geographic or simply an emotional indicator. Except, of course, it still pays to be careful about anyone who might be a Parisian driver, either a real one or just a wannabe.