Government-Provincial
N.B. won’t drop front licence plate
Times & Transcript Staff
10 Jun 2013 09:21AM
The main reason?
“Law enforcement tells us that we need them,” says Deborah Nobes, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety. “It helps them to find people and vehicles of interest.” Without that front licence plate, police looking for a specific vehicle would have to ride up behind it in order to find it, and having two licence plates on each vehicle means officers can find the car they’re looking for whether that car is coming or going.
And while it is not well known and not at all publicized, some RCMP cars in New Brunswick have built in cameras that automatically scan the plates of oncoming cars and alert the officer driving the police car of any problems which might compel that officer to pull over that car — an unpaid fine for example, or an arrest warrant for its registered owner.
A new movement known as FixNB has taken to the airwaves of YouTube with a short video suggesting that the front licence plate on New Brunswick-registered car is redundant, unsightly, expensive and next to useless. They argue the province could save money by eliminating the need to print the second plate and note that only four provinces and none of the three territories still mandate two-plated vehicles. FixNB is just the latest group to rally public sentiment against front licence plates; some drivers have lobbied for its elimination for years, particularly those who own vehicles whose front ends don’t easily accommodate a front licence plate.
FixNB might be correct that one plate is cheaper than two, but a move to a single plaque wouldn’t save much money, Nobes said Wednesday. The greater expense is in making the stamp that is used to imprint the plate, more so than making the plate itself, she said.
While she couldn’t immediately say how much might be saved by taxpayers by moving to a single licence plate, “it is not exorbitantly more to make two plates than it is to make just one.” Not everyone is lobbying to move to a one-plate system — other than law-enforcement officers, school bus drivers find the front plate handy for identifying bad drivers who illegally and dangerously pass school buses when their red lights are flashing.
Licence plates used to cost car owners $15 per pair just a few years ago, a price which jumped to $25 in 2009 and to $50 last year.
New Brunswickers also have the option of paying more for personalized plates bearing a message of their choosing — as long as the message is in good taste — or Conservation plates which direct a portion of the extra costs toward the Wildlife Trust Fund which in turn awards grants for conservation projects. Conservation plates a very popular with more than 33,000 bolted onto New Brunswick-registered vehicles, pumping more than $1 million into the fund every year.
There are also special plates available for everyone from firefighters to military veterans.
In many other jurisdictions, drivers also have the option of a wide number of novelty plates that direct all or part of the extra cost to causes of the plate-owners’ choosing. New Brunswick has been considering issuing such plates.
In Florida for example, car owners can show their support for more than 100 causes via their licence plates, with plates bearing the slogan Trees are Cool automatically sending $25 to the state’s arboricultural society, or plates bearing the name of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning sending the extra plate fees to a sports development initiative, to name just two. Even Nova Scotia offers plates bearing the Acadian flag, with the extra money funnelled to initiatives to develop Acadian and francophone causes.
While the province hasn’t dismissed the idea of expanding the types of plates available here, the issue remains under study and no decision is imminent.
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