Melanie Blank Brown chose “BLANK” for her license plate. Until a recent move, she did not know that the plate was creating problems behind the scenes.
When she updated her registration with a new address, the plate entry was ingested by local registration and ticketing systems. Many of those systems had entries in which the license plate number had been entered as blank. As a result, violations meant for other people were tied to Brown’s registration.
She was initially told she had two outstanding tickets. The count eventually rose to more than 400 violations, with fines totaling more than $40,000. Because the tickets had been issued across the city, they could not be handled all at once, and Brown had to visit multiple judges to get them voided.
The case runs contrary to the familiar idea that a clever vanity plate can help a driver dodge automated enforcement. Here, the plate did not shield Brown from tickets; it made her registration a destination for citations issued elsewhere.
To keep the pile from growing, Brown surrendered the vanity plate. The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles has since removed “BLANK” from the pool of potential vanity plates. Her new plate reads “KNALB,” reversing the word.