When I read the headline for this story (it didn’t mention Chicago), I bet myself a million dollars that the man had an Illinois license plate. I am now a millionaire. Or I will be as soon as I pay myself.
Meet Tom. He is the proud owner of the license plate “0.” His family has had the plate for 40 years. Apparently, it didn’t occur to the City of Chicago to check to see if someone was using the “0″ license plate before they decided to use it to test their ticketing equipment.
Since 1997, Tom has been receiving all kinds of tickets. Parking tickets. Expired meter tickets. Street sweeping tickets. Tickets for running stop signs and red lights. He’s even gotten tickets for parking his taxi on a residential street. Though the article doesn’t specifically mention it, he doesn’t seem own a taxi. He also probably doesn’t own a bus, but he has a ticket for parking one illegally.
UPI says that Tom has been trying to clear up the issue, (for 12 years, we assume) but has so far been unable to get anyone to help him. Until now, of course.
“The test violations should have been dismissed in the database. The majority of the cases (Tom) contested successfully. But we are taking steps to rectify the situation so in the future an actual registered plate number will not be used to do the testing,” Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh told the Chicago Tribune. He said that the Department of Revenue was unaware that the “0″ plate was in circulation.
’0′ plate gets 170 mistaken tickets [UPI via Fark]
(Photo:Michael_Lehet)
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He should use this to his advantage and contest real tickets on the claim of:
“Look at all these other tickets, illegally parking a bus? I dont own a bus! Clearly I didnt go 80 through this school zone for handicapped kittens!”
@Jeremy82465: But he did drive that buss over 55mph that one time……
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: They dont have to know that
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Dude…He did it to save Sandra Bullock! Same thing with that other guy and the boat!
(God, Speed 2 was awful.)
I read something along the same lines at Snopes:
[www.snopes.com]
People who put in requests for plates, and wrote “No Plate” in the last field b/c they only wanted their first two choices get the tag, NO PLATE. So when a cop comes across a car w/a missing tag, he writes NO PLATE. Hilarity ensues.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Me personally, I would enjoy this, as it would give me a day off from work to go down to the courthouse, know the ticket will get thrown out, but enjoy the spectacle that is our legal system.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave:
It’s a LOT less amusing when it happens. When I was in college (full time) and working several jobs to pay for the privilege, I got parking tickets all the time. Parking tickets for leaving my car in a permit-only area — except I had the permit, displayed as legally required. The myopic metermaid kept ticketing me. The angle of the car’s rear windshield may have made a glare so that the permit-sticker wasn’t visible from the end of the block, where she would write her tickets. But instead of correcting her mistake, she’d leave me the ticket. And I’d have to go to court each and every time, because the city bureaucracy couldn’t even figure out that when I showed up at City Hall w/ my permit receipt, photographs of the car/location and ticket that they should cancel the bogus ticket. When I had to get out of work to go to court for someone else’s dumb mistake, it cost me 3 hours wages + $10 or $15 in parking fees. When I missed class, I was out approximately $450 worth of services that I’d paid for + $10-15 in parking fees.
I’m still pissed.
@kateblack: Damn, wherever you went to school was expensive!
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: There’s a story about Steve Wozniak and his one-time life dream to have a single-digit phone number, 888-8888. Turned out the number was unusable.
@Michael Belisle: The local cab company here is 7 (777-7777)
@Joe DeLorenzo: Our area cab company is 666-6666.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Thank you: talking about Snopes and license plates allows me to post this great story: [www.snopes.com]
@Alex Chasick: The Smoking Gun had this as well: [www.thesmokinggun.com]
@Alex Chasick:
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Damn my quick fingers!
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Another reason to be proud of Florida.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave:
I know a Urologist who’s plate is PP DR.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: The same thing happened a bunch of years ago (in NY or NJ) to a woman who had “TEMP” as her vanity plate – hundreds of tickets from all across the State.
I don’t know how it ended, but last I heard, the bureaucratic nightmare was that a lot of municipalities were still going to make her show up in court to fight the ticket.
There was another one that was NO TAG.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: while we’re talking about stupid things states have done…
In NC, our standard plates come in the form of 3 letters, a dash, and 4 numbers (in the form of ABC-1234). Certain prefixes have been deemed “idecent” and will never occur, such as ASS and FUK.
within the past 2 years, we’ve gone through the W phase of our plates, and the prefix “WTF” was printed. nobody cared. until somebody realized that “WTF” could stand for “What The F**k”. North Carolina sent out letters to all 10,000 “WTF” plate owners, offering to replace their plates free of charge, if they were offended.
@gStein: LOL, I was just looking up this story. I would’ve paid for one of those plates but I thought DMV would’ve already banned these. Ah, I love the Tarheel state.
some random guy has the “0″ plate? I know in VA they give out single digit plates to politicians (1 for the Governor, 2 for Lieutenant Governor, and 3 for president pro tem of the senate, etc). I can only presume that the purpose of that is so that they do not get tickets, so it kind of confuses me that Illinois of all places would not have at least a similar policy..
@Megalomania: Yeah, I saw a Washington DC plate with just “1″ driving around Missouri. I’m pretty sure it had to be Jesus’s SUV.
@calquist:
DC plate 1 is that of the Mayor of the District of Columbia, although it’s rarely used due to security concerns. Legend has it that the last Mayor, Tony Williams, had it in his desk drawer for most of his term. But then, DC makes all kinds of “make this person feel special” plates. Plates 2-1250 are given out by the Mayor and City Council on a yearly basis as political favors. Walter Washington, the first DC Mayor elected by the people of DC, had “First Elected Mayor” printed on his plate, no number at all. Oddly, the President tools around with the plain old DC plate 800-002.
@Megalomania: In some states they have auctions for the very short plates.
@Megalomania: You can keep plates in the family in Illinois, and people with low-number plates in Illinois go to crazy lengths to keep them since they’re a sign of prestige. If your family got an automobile sufficiently long ago and has kept the plate ever since … voila, low-number plate. The Chicago Tribune used to run an accounting of who had them now and then; most of them belong to old money on the North Shore.
I can tell my husband has become a real Illinoisian because he texted me a couple weeks ago when he saw plate #11 in his parking garage.
@calquist: In Illinois, the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago traditionally got plate #1 (partly because then politicians couldn’t bicker of the assignment of it!). But IIRC, they quit using it a few years ago.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Are they held on with special screws or something? It would suck to have a 40 year old family heirloom stolen from a parking garage.
@winshape: It’s the number, not the actual plate that is special. I know someone whose plate is GARY B. His plates get stolen every few months.
@Megalomania:
Illinois does do exactly that. The Governor gets “1″, all the way down to the Auditor General at “7″. Most states have the zero blocked from passenger use, as it’s usually what gets put on sample plates and the like. Interesting that IL has it floating around out there.
@Megalomania:
I know they also give out special plates to the delegates here in VA. My delegate (state congressman) who lives up the street has his district as his license plate number.
@Megalomania:
Illinois has special government plates to denote politicians. An example would be an Illinois House plate which I believe is numbered based on your district
I’m surprised they didn’t commandeer the plate and tell him to go to the back of the custom plate line. Not that they should, but that’s about what I’d expect from them.
@Michael Belisle: The commonwealth of Virginia did that to the owners of “2 DYKES.”
The lesbian couple calling themselves dykes offended some Christian.
@kateblack: I think I saw that plate once, did they live in Arlington?
@Michael Belisle: “His family has had the plate for 40 years.” It’s been that way for a while. It’s not like the guy chose it recently.
@squinko: you really think that would stop them?
@qwickone: No. I fully believe every government employee exists only to make my life harder. Just doing their job? Right. More like, just doing their patriotic socialist duty, COMRADE.
Lucky guy. It sounds like he has a get out of jail free card for all non-moving violations.
Maybe they thought that the zero is actually an ‘oh’ and figured it was Oprah, who in turn would do a show about women who love dogs who read books who hate men.
@Japheaux: I wish my dog would read books. He mostly slobbers on them, then the cats sleep on them.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave:
Out of the 4 dogs we’ve owned, only 1 has ever been able to watch tv and recognize people/animals.
@henwy: And even then he probably got their names wrong.
@henwy: That’s so weird.. my dog does the same thing.. growls at horses and various other animals on TV.. i have to cover his head with a blanket like a bird in a cage..
@Skeetz: My dog wags her tail at dogs on TV, barks at cats, and goes to the front door if someone rings a doorbell on a show. Any idea how often a doorbell rings on TV? A lot more than I used to think….
@docrice:
One of my dogs barks like crazy if a doorbell rings on TV, and yes, it does happen more often than you think. Some commercials have multiple rings in them. What’s weird is that there’s frequently quite bit of difference in how the doorbells sound, and our doorbell doesn’t sound very standard at all, but he still thinks it’s our door every time. Amusing the first few times, but not so much any more.
Why did it take this long for someone to notice had an strange plate number? Even if it was my first day at the DMV, and some guy says “Hey I got a ticket for a taxi and a bus, and I own neither”…then I see is plate number is “0″…I’d suspect one thing had to do with the other.
@AlteredBeast: It’s called bureaucracy. It doesn’t pay to think, and if you do the blame fully falls on your shoulders. It is better to blame management.
@AlteredBeast: The DMV has squat to do with Parking Tickets. You’re from Jersey, you should know that.
I would have shit-canned that plate a long time ago. It’s not worth the hassle.
@HiPwr: What about the first people who got SS#’s? All those extra zeroes.
000-00-0024
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: I would like to discourage anyone from putting their social security number on their license plate.
@HiPwr: My Mother does the same thing to my underwear.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: Keep your pants up and stay out of Chicago and you’ll be okay.
@HiPwr: Stop playing with yourself.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave: I believe the first parts of SSNs are assigned based on location, not sequentially. So NH gets 001-XX-XXXX through 003-XX-XXXX, etc. A list of these are found at [www.ssa.gov] .
@Liam Kinkaid: But Mr. Burns had naught naught naught, naught naught, naught naught naught two.
@BennyMigrationWitness_GitEmSteveDave:
Damn Roosevelt!
Illinois was always the land of crazy vanity plates (to us in Indiana, at least).
When I moved there, once I was driving to work and saw what appeared to be an ordinary woman driving a Toyota with plates that read KKKatie.
I’ve always wondered if she was the clueless type, or the grand wizard type.
@rpm773: It’s a famous old song: [www.kididdles.com]
@floraposte: Well, when culturally illiterate screwballs like me are on the road, such references can be dangerously misinterpreted
@rpm773: Did she have a satin robe on?
@rpm773: How about the lady who loved ToFu and wanted Iluvtofu on her plate.
Here’s a link of complaint letters Wisconsin got: [www.thesmokinggun.com]
or Washington:
[www.thesmokinggun.com]
@rpm773: Maybe she just had a stutter.
This is piss-poor testing methodology. #1, There’s no reason that they should be using a system that issues real “live” actions to perform functional tests, and #2, if they do perform testing in a live system (there are valid reasons, such as post-maintenance/upgrade checks, etc.), they should only be using a corpus of *known* “dummy” or otherwise containable variables (like, say, the mayor’s plate).
But it seems, in government, idiots can be steadily employed, even in the worst recession in a half century.
@krom: The problem with using the mayor’s plate is that you end up with a visit from the mayor’s security.
I knew a developer for Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. He needed a plate number he had never used before to test some code, so walked outside and jotted down the first plate number he saw. Five minutes after he ran a query on it, he got a visit from some stern highway patrol officer wanting to know why he was looking up the plate number for one of the FHP’s top brass.
@krom: dude…it’s the rmv. what do you want?
Here in MA people got fed up with the wait times at the RMV. So they did the logical thing, they removed all the clocks.
/wishes he was joking….
@krom: More likely that they employed a software consulting firm and are paying twice as much as they should.
@Liam Kinkaid: Way to kill the funny there, buddy.
@squinko: +1
I’m still waiting for my “SMLWNR” plates to go with my new tricked out beemer…
@Skeetz: Better be an M series or it’ll be wasted.
Oh, and don’t forget your 5 popped collars, ray-bans and bluetooth headset.
@Skeetz: Maybe you should stop thinking so much about penises, especially since your little obsession has nothing to do with the story.
@nytmare: Rar! Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.
@Skeetz: Waiting? They’re standard with all new hummers now.
@Coles_Law: oh nice! didn’t even think of Hummer.. would have been more relevant.. like a jeep with 3 foot tires.
@HiPwr:
Plausible deniability man, plausible deniability.
Why didn’t Tom simply switch to a normal plate 12 years ago when this began happening? I get that the license plate has been in the family for 40 years, but was it really worth it?
How about just moving out of that toliet to somewhere nice?
It is so nice that Illinois is the Florida of the midwest.