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Yesterday as I was driving I saw a car with a license plate that made me do a double take. The car had:

  • Clearly visible license plate
  • Securely fastened
  • Free of obstruction
  • No obscurring cover over the plate
  • Located in the appropriate spot on the rear bumper

The reason for the double take was that the owner had apparently flipped the license plate horizontally, and painted the back of it in the exact same colors as was on the front of the plate.

So if the plate was ABC-123, I saw it as:

enter image description here

To me this was done in an attempt to block the license plate from automated number readers etc. (But given what I know about vision systems, this is would be trivial to for the system to bypass)

This was in New Mexico, I tried to look up the what I believe is the relevant statute, but ended on this random law office page.

66-3-18. Display of registration plates and temporary registration permits; displays prohibited and allowed.

A. The registration plate shall be attached to the rear of the vehicle for which it is issued; however, the registration plate shall be attached to the front of a road tractor or truck tractor. The plate shall be securely fastened at all times in a fixed horizontal position at a height of not less than twelve inches from the ground, measuring from the bottom of the plate. It shall be in a place and position so as to be clearly visible, and it shall be maintained free from foreign material and in a condition to be clearly legible.

Based on reading that text, I can't see anything that points to what this person did being illegal. But I'm sure there has to be something about not being legal? Surely?

So is this actually illegal? Ideally I'd love a NM answer, but I'm curios about other areas of the US/world.

Edit

Several people are stating that the reversed text is not legible. My position on this is that is that while related, legible is an orthogonal concept to intelligible/Readable. See here or here for example. Based on that understanding, the reversed license plate is legible.

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  • I wonder about the legality of displaying it upside down.
    – Michael Hall
    Commented Jun 1 at 23:38
  • @MichaelHall In the other places I have seen front license plates of motorcycles attached to the forks via the long edge , so that the plate was near vertical.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 2 at 13:46
  • Washington state law says it must be "horizontal" FYI.
    – Michael Hall
    Commented Jun 2 at 15:48
  • Were you looking in your rear-view mirror at the time?
    – DJohnM
    Commented Jun 3 at 6:23
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    @DJohnM Nope, Looking straight forward at the rear of the car that was ahead of me. Plus NM has rear-only license plates, so kinds hard to see the rear of another car in my rear view mirror.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 3 at 13:07

3 Answers 3

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I suspect this would fall afoul of "alter", forge", and "clearly legible".

New Mexico:

66-8-3. False evidences of title and registration.

It is a felony for any person to commit any of the following acts:

A. to alter with fraudulent intent any certificate of title, registration evidence, registration plate, validating sticker or permit issued by the division;

B. to forge or counterfeit any such document or plate purporting to have been issued by the division;

C. to alter or falsify with fraudulent intent or to forge any assignment upon a certificate of title; or

D. to hold or use any such document or plate, knowing the same to have been so altered, forged or falsified.

https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/2018/chapter-66/article-8/section-66-8-3/

Virginia:

§ 46.2-722. Altered or forged license plates or decals; use as evidence of knowledge.

Any person who, with fraudulent intent, alters any license plate or decal issued by the Department or by any other state, forges or counterfeits any license plate or decal purporting to have been issued by the Department under the provisions of this title or by any other state under a similar law or who, with fraudulent intent, alters, falsifies, or forges any assignment thereof, or who holds or uses any license plate or decal knowing it to have been altered, forged, or falsified, shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The owner of a vehicle who operates it while it displays altered or forged license plates or decals shall be presumed to have knowledge of the alteration or forgery.

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter6/section46.2-722/

The state issued "ABC-123". They did NOT issue the reversed text. And that reversed text is not "clearly legible".

Lastly, this would be like waving a raw steak in front of a starving pitbull. "Stop me and ask WTF."

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    Acting as Devil's Advocate, the plate itself has not been altered, or forged, or counterfeited, or being used to defraud anyone - especially if the front of it was not touched. And I assume it is the plate that was issued to the car. The state issued "a plate". That plate is clearly being displayed. But I agree, it's a bold move. But I also think it falls under people not being consciously aware of things that they see all the time.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 1 at 22:51
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    The visible portion is, to me, a fake/forge/counterfeit. The state issued "ABC-123". What is being displayed, the text mirrored, is not an official issued plate number. No different than painting "SCREW U" on the back of the official "ABC-123" issued plate.
    – WPNSGuy
    Commented Jun 1 at 22:55
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    Your last point reminds me of this XKCD comic.
    – Michael Seifert
    Commented Jun 3 at 13:54
  • @PeterM right, this would not be an altered plate. Most of the time it is a ticket written as not displaying the plate properly, irl.
    – Tak
    Commented Jun 4 at 3:20
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Mirror writing is not “clearly legible”

“Legible” means capable of being read or deciphered - mirror writing meets that criteria, but it fails when you add the “clearly” adjective.

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    Are you sure you are not conflating "legible" with "intelligible"? Because they are two different concepts. I agree that this plate was not necessarily intelligible, but IMHO it was very legible.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 3 at 13:11
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    @PeterM no, it's not clearly legible. You may think that it is clearly mirrored Latin alphabet characters and European-style Indo-Arabic numerals, but it could also be characters from some other script. Because there is ambiguity (however slight), there is a lack of clarity.
    – phoog
    Commented Jun 4 at 0:29
  • @phoog Did you look at my links explaining the difference between legibility and readability?
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 4 at 13:57
  • @PeterM yes, but you don’t explain what work the word “clearly” is doing in the legislation. If they meant just legible, they would have said legible, but they didn’t, they said “clearly legible”.
    – Dale M ♦
    Commented Jun 4 at 23:09
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Your quoted text says the plate shall be attached, not a mirror image of the plate.

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    But the plate is attached. Just not in the way you would expect it to be attached.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 1 at 22:46
  • @PeterM, it isn't clear, that's not the plate.
    – Tiger Guy
    Commented Jun 2 at 5:25
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    It's absolutely the plate. It's just the wrong side of the plate. My money is on the "clearly legible" argument. It is not clearly legible.
    – phoog
    Commented Jun 2 at 18:40
  • @phoog If the plate was painted in low contrast colors, then I might agree with you. But it was painted in the correct high contrast for the type of plate it was. However, the dictionary definition of "legible" is problematic, as pretty well all adults can read something backwards.
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 2 at 22:08
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    @PeterM "pretty well all adults" isn't "all literate adults," and furthermore it takes longer to recognize the mirrored writing than it does to recognize normal writing, which has significant implications for the clarity of legibility of an object that may be traveling with a speed relative to the reader of up to 200 km/h or so
    – phoog
    Commented Jun 4 at 0:34

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