The current Florida license plate design

While Florida offers residents an impressively large selection of custom license plates, its standard-issue plates are best described as bland. Green numbers and letters stand out against a white background, punctuated by a ghosted rendition of Florida’s shape and a pair of oranges. If it’s not the least attractive license plate in the entire U.S., it’s certainly in the running for a top five spot.

There’s an advantage to the current, basic license plate, however – it’s difficult for the digital camera’s used to spot red light offenders and toll runners to read. How much so? According to ABC Action News (via Left Lane News), there have been some 2.8 million incidents of unreadable tags in 2012 alone. That adds up to a serious amount of lost citation and toll revenue.

Four news designs are being proposed and each features black characters on a white background. Sure, the orange is still in the design, but its minimized and placed atop the plate, composing the “o” in Florida in most of the designs. Unlike the current plates, which also list the county, the new plates would only carry the state’s name.

Florida will post the four designs to the state’s Department of Transportation website, allowing the public to choose its favorite layout. Next, the governor, Cabinet and Legislature will all need to green light the new plates, which is really a formality given the potential of increased revenue. If all goes as planned, the new plates would appear in either 2014 or 2015.