Dubai continues to deliver the number plate heavyweights
Five premium private registrations raised AED75 million (£15.75m) at a charity auction held in Dubai on 16th March 2025. Funds from 'The Most Noble Auction' will go to the Fathers' Endowment initiative. Launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the initiative aims to establish a one billion dirham (AED) endowment fund to provide sustainable healthcare to the poor and needy.
Highlight of the auction was the number plate DD 5, which was sold for AED35 million. With a starting price of AED15 million, DD 5 attracted more than 20 bidders, and was eventually acquired by businessman Muhammad BinGhatti.
DD 5's selling price of AED35 million (£7.36 million) wins it a place at number four in Regtransfers' rankings of the 50 most expensive number plates in the world.
One of the hopeful bidders was 13-year-old Abdulkader Walid Asaad. He didn't manage to win the auction for DD 5, but the young man did successfully purchase the number DD 24 for AED6.3 million (£1.32 million). We're not sure what plans he has for DD 24: even though the legal driving age in Dubai will be lowered from 18 to 17 at the end of March 2025, Abdulkader will still have to wait a few years before he can drive around in a car bearing his private registration number.
Number plate theft a problem in Australia
The Victorian municipality of Casey has the state's highest occurrences of number plate theft. Recently released crime figures show that in the 12 months to September 2024, police there received 1,987 reports of stolen plates. Other municipalities sharing the dubious distinction of Victoria's plate-theft hotspots include Hume (1,408), Greater Dandenong (1,374), Wyndham (1,121), and Brimbank (1,110).
Police admit that they only recover 22% of the stolen plates, which are often used to commit further offences, including burglaries, petrol drive-offs, drive-by shootings, arson and even homicides.
Victoria residents have been advised to park their cars in garages where possible, and to fit anti-theft screws to their plates. The screws are readily available from hardware stores and they make it much harder and slower for crooks to remove number plates from cars.
Police Inspector Stu Richards said, "Having to replace your plates is not only an inconvenience, it’s also costly, especially if you keep receiving tolls or fines once they’re in the hands of criminals. That’s why we encourage vehicle owners to use anti-theft screws to deter thieves in the first instance.”
Number plates for satellites?
With the number of artificial satellites orbiting the Earth exceeding 11,000 in total, and the number of bits of junk and debris exceeding 40,000, there is a real, and growing, risk of orbital traffic accidents between satellites, and even between satellites or debris and manned spacecraft.
While a number of agencies do track satellites and orbital debris, they can only warn satellite owners and operators of impending collisions if they know who owns the objects involved. When rockets launch into space, they sometimes release multiple satellites simultaneously, which makes it very difficult to track and identify the objects.
Los Alamos National Laboratory has invented a postage stamp-sized gadget called the Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier, or 'ELROI' and staff there have described it as a license plate for satellites. ELROI is solar-powered and has a small laser that flashes in a unique pattern that can be read from Earth. This laser equivalent of a registration number allows the object carrying the laser to be identified and its operator informed of threats from other orbital traffic.
The system was successfully tested in 2024 and, as it uses lasers rather than acrylic number plates, there is no danger of the registration numbers being misread by ANPR and the satellite owners receiving erroneous penalty notices for speeding or driving in bus lanes.
US court rules against license plate free speech
A number of court cases in America have addressed people's freedom to express themselves on their private license plates, or "vanity plates". In many cases, courts have ruled that such expression amounts to exercising the right to freedom of speech. In some cases, rulings have prevented potentially offensive or provocative license plates being withdrawn or suppressed due to objections by citizens or authorities.
A recent ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court, however, found in favour of censorship by deciding that license plates are government speech, not private speech and, as such, they are not subject to the protections of the First Amendment.
The decision is another chapter in the long story of Nashville resident Leah Gilliam, who in 2010 applied for licence plate 69PWNDU in 2010. The plate's message translates as "69 Pwned you", a reference to the once-popular online term to pwn someone or something, meaning to beat, rule or dominate that someone or something.
After 11 years, Ms Gilliam was informed that her license plate would be revoked due to its reference to “sexual domination.” Ms Gilliam denied any sexual connotation and insisted that the digits were a reference to her phone number. She subsequently sued the Commissioner of the Department of Revenue and the Tennessee Attorney General in Davidson County Chancery Court, claiming that they violated her right to free speech by revoking her plate.
In defending the case, the state said that the Department of Revenue has several categories deemed objectionable for use in license plates including profanity, violence, sex, illegal substances, derogatory slang terms, and racial or ethnic slurs. The department also has a general policy of rejecting plate applications containing the number 69, unless the number refers to the vehicle’s model year.
Referring to an earlier case that originated in Texas but which made it to the United States Supreme Court, the Tennessee court ruled that the characters on the plate expressed government speech.
Gilliam’s attorneys, including specialist free speech lawyers, expressed dismay at the ruling and said that they would take the case to the United States Supreme Court.
“There is a reason why nearly every other court to adjudicate this issue has concluded that personalised license plates are not communicating secret government messages, and we will be asking the United States Supreme Court to review the Tennessee Supreme Court’s error,” said lawyer David Horwitz
David Hudson, another member of Ms Gilliam's legal team said, “Anyone who looks at a vanity plate recognises that it is a personal statement by the owner of the vehicle,” Hudson said. “It is not the speech of the government. The government speech doctrine has a dangerous capacity to swallow up entire swaths of personal expression. It’s a very dangerous doctrine.”
