Q. My question concerns the new firefighter license plates that recently emerged. These plates are only allowed on passenger vehicles, and they keep the passenger car license plate type. Purple Heart, Veteran, and National Guard plates (among others) have their own license plate types and their own sets of numbers, and can be placed on pickup trucks, etc. Why is this not the case for firefighter plates? It is probably a safe assumption that a large number of firefighters own pickup trucks as personal vehicles.

A. Firefighter plates are not a separate plate type, but a plate design has a lot to do with the answer to your question. But the statute also must be amended. RIGL 31-3-17.4 Firefighter plates, states “…(b) The special motor vehicle registration plate shall carry on it the designation “Firefighter” and a Maltese cross with the design provided by the Rhode Island Association of Fire Chiefs.” In another statute - 31-3-11 Contents of registration plate, we read, “… (a) Every registration plate shall have displayed upon it the registration number assigned to the vehicle for which it is issued, the name of the state of Rhode Island, which may be abbreviated “R.I.”, and the year number for which it is issued or the date of its expiration. Registration plates shall also have printed on them the words, “ocean state.” (b) The provision requiring the printing of the words “ocean state” on these plates shall not pertain to commercial plates or to plates issued to recipients of the Purple Heart.”

The current firefighter plates, according to the above statutes, MUST HAVE the words “Firefighter” and “Rhode Island” on the plate, along with the Maltese cross. The words “Rhode Island” are across the top of the plate and “Firefighter” is at the bottom. For the DMV to manufacture the plate for a commercial vehicle, the word “Commercial” would have to appear somewhere on the plate, but where? Now, it’s true that other types of plates, such as the ones you mention, can be put on commercial vehicles, and that’s due to the fact that in our antiquated software system, these are different plate types rather than designs, and have separate categories assigned to them in the system whereby the DMV can register a vehicle as National Guard/Truck or Veteran/Truck. The design on any plate — whether sailboat, Mr. Potato Head, the new Osprey plate or the Firefighter plate — is not a categorization in the computer system. Once the DMV has the capability, in our new computer system, to create a new plate type for Firefighter, we will then be able to issue Firefighter plates to the many Rhode Island firefighters who own small pickups as their personal vehicles.

Gina Antonucci Zanni, chief of communications for the State Division of Motor Vehicles, has agreed to answer questions of general interest posed by Journal readers about state motor vehicle laws and procedures. To ask a question that would also be of interest to other readers, send a letter to Ask projoCars, Features Department, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI, 02902. You can e-mail your question to projocars@projo.com. Please put “Ask projoCars” in the subject field. Questions or complaints of a specific nature should be posed to the DMV directly and will not be answered in this column.

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