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Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
Did they ever figure out why the plates couldn't be read at night? Never heard of such a thing anywhere eles.  |
The flat licence places that the US uses are an entirely reflective panel, and the serial is always printed on top in dark, non-reflective ink, so that the serial is readable in the dark. The only exception to that is Montana, which has one optional licence plate that is matte blue with white serial, but the plate itself seems to be much less reflective, and most Montanans are using different designs.
With the blue plates Ontario tried, the backing was very reflective, and the serial wasn't actually white non-reflective ink on top of it, it was a gap in the regular ink that revealed the reflective backing. They could have fixed it with using either a non-reflective white ink to apply the serial directly on top, or using a non-reflective blue ink so that only the serial reflected, but that likely brought the cost of the plate close enough to the cost of the current plates that, in light of the issues caused by Covid, persuaded the government to scrap the change.
They could convert the current design to a flat one (many states have done that, Minnesota is the best example I can think of) and change the slogan and logo on the existing design, but I figure they're not concerned about that right now. It'll probably get changed in a year or two when Covid has largely passed.
I'm surprised that the manufacturer, 3M, was brazen enough to sell them these plates since they likely knew that the design they intended to use and the process they used to accomplish it wouldn't produce a usable product. Either that or the research and development at 3M's licence plate division is shittier than one expects.
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