‘Ateball,’ ‘Bosbich,’ and more rejected Pennsylvania vanity plates

Over at PennDOT, it’s somebody’s job to sift through the thousands of vanity license plate applications annually to weed out the bad seeds. Each submission must comply with a set of rules put in place to ensure they don’t offend, confuse or copy other drivers. Motorists can make up any combination of up to seven letters and/or numbers to make their tags stand out on highways and byways. 

The agency recently issued a “Do Not Issue” list of unacceptable configurations – and the list is long – and lewd. Hundreds of thousands of personalized submissions were rejected last year because they were previously issued or almost identical to another plate, misleading to police, profane, lascivious, obscene or vulgar, contained sexual innuendo, related to drugs, alcohol, organized crime or other illegal activities and for a host of others reasons. Here are a few of our favorites. 

Pearl-clutchers and pedants, beware!