A New York driver’s attempt at a clever vanity plate turned into a drawn-out paperwork ordeal after automated registration and ticketing systems read her plate as an empty field instead of a plate number. Melanie Blank Brown, a New York resident, had chosen “BLANK” for her vehicle. Until a recent move, she had no idea what that choice had set in motion.
When her registration was updated with a new address, the new entry for her plate sequence was ingested by local registration and ticketing systems. Many of those systems held entries in which the plate number had been recorded as “Blank,” so violations logged without a plate number were linked to her record.
The consequences arrived quickly. Brown was told she had two outstanding tickets, a figure that eventually grew to more than 400 violations with fines totaling more than $40,000.
Clearing the record was not a single transaction. Because the tickets had been issued across the city, they could not be handled all at once, and Brown had to make repeated visits to multiple judges to have each one voided.
To keep the pile from growing further, Brown surrendered the vanity plate. The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles has since removed “BLANK” from its pool of potential vanity plates, so that no other driver can take a similar gamble.
Her replacement plate, according to The New York Times, reads “KNALB” — the same letters in reverse order. The case runs opposite to widely circulated tales of drivers using clever plates to dodge automated tickets; most such stories are likely false at worst, or embellished at best.