Vanity License Plate Trouble

Elsmere, Delaware
Resident Jim Cara, a 43-year-old who works for the American Motorcycle Association, has always loved to make people laugh. That was his motivation when he chose the vanity license tag "NOTAG" for his Suzuki motorcycle.

But the joke has backfired like a bad muffler. Thanks to a computer snafu, he was mailed the "NOTAG" plates along with 200 parking violations where police listed the license plate as "no tag."

"All the traffic tickets say, 'Notice of violation. License number: no tag,'" Cara explained to The Associated Press. What happened is that Wilmington's computers, which were linked to the state Division of Motor Vehicles, did what those computers are supposed to do: link traffic tickets to the appropriate license plate tag. "I messed up the system so bad," Cara marveled. "I wonder if they can put me in jail or something?"

Wilmington officials may not be laughing at Cara's vanity plate joke, but they are willing to correct the error of their computer's ways. They blamed it on an incorrect computer code used by one of the city's contractors whose job it is to process the city's parking violations.

Fortunately, Wilmington is the only jurisdiction with the no-tag computer glitch, according to Kelly Pitts, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation.

So after all this, will Cara get rid of his "NOTAG" plates? No way, said Cara. "I think it's awesome."