My Biggest Complaint About Antique Vehicle License Plates

As much as it annoys me, my home state, Virginia has an annual safety inspection. It covers basic things like ensuring that your car actually stops, that it won’t carbon monoxide poison your kids in the back seat due to leaky exhaust, that your brake lights work so that the cars behind you don’t slam into you because they can’t tell that you’re stopping. Little things like that.

I personally think this is good thing. I see the results when I drive into West Virginia (which to my knowledge doesn’t have an annual safety inspection), and see those pieces of crap they drive down the road over there. I’ve seen cars driving down the road in West Virginia with windshields smashed so bad that spiders try to take up residence in them. Honestly, some of them are so crashed up that it looks like they just “won” the local demolition derby at the county fair and the prize was getting to drive them home.

So what is the deal with “Antique License Plates” in Virginia? If your car is over a certain age (25 years I think) you can get antique license plates in Virginia, and if you have them, you don’t have to get an annual safety inspection. So guess who gets the Antique license plates? The people driving death traps down the road towards you and me. The pieces of crap won’t pass inspection so Virginia gives them antique plates. Granted the law states that cars with Antique plates (and no safety inspections) are only supposed to be used in car shows and parades and that sort of thing. But come on, when some clown is driving a 1978 Toyota Corolla with no floorboards down the road with Antique Plates, we all know what is going on.