DVLA Announces Blacklisted Number Plates For 2022
The UK's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has announced its list of blacklisted number plates for 2022.
Like a terrible version of the Oscars for cars, the winners of the worst, most offensive or simply unacceptable number plates are revealed by the government agency each March.
The list determines number plates that drivers in the UK should not be allowed to get, either by pure coincidence from a manufacturer or through a request for a personalised number plate.
More than 340 plates have been banned by the authority, with many of those that made the blacklist relating to explicit or crude words you might expect a teenager to write on a calculator in school, while others have been banned due to political, racial or religious reasons.
This year's list also bans a number of coronavirus-related plates, including CO22 RNA, CO22 ONA and CO22 VD, while other plates which you won't find on the street include F22 KER, BA22 TRD, A22 HLE, TU22 URD and DR22 NK.
In a statement on the matter, a spokesperson for the DVLA explained: "the vast majority of registration numbers are made available but the agency holds back any combinations that may cause offence, embarrassment, or are in poor taste," Birmingham Live reports.
"Many people enjoy displaying a personalised registration number and there are over 50m registrations available on our website with almost endless possibilities of combinations to suit a person's taste, interests and budget," they continued.
As well as banning certain letter and number combinations, the DVLA has this year banned two-toned plates which use extra colours to make the letters appear 3D. The move aims to make it easier for Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to read the lettering.
The DVLA explains it releases more than seven million new combinations of number plates with two letters, two numbers and three letters at the end every six months, though dateless plates and those with different prefixes and suffixes are also available on the personalised registration site, with prices for personalisation starting at £250.
News of the blacklist comes amid other changes to license plates, with cars registered from this month given a '22' tag, rather than the previous '71'. Number plates created from 1 March will also be made from a new material which is supposed to be tougher to allow the plates to be more resistant to damage and abrasion on the road.
Emily Brown