Is There Some Sort of Underground Market in Fake Texas License Plates?

Considering how many miles separate Texas and Oregon, I see an awful lot of license plates from the Lone Star State around Portland. Given those plates’ easy-to-copy black-and-white design and peculiar lack of yearly registration tags, I naturally suspect foul play. Is there some sort of underground market in fake Texas plates, allowing traffic cheaters to avoid fines and fees? —Suspicious in Portland

Really, Suspicious, I’m surprised you’re even asking this question. Had you done a simple Google search, you’d have found that it’s been answered on dozens of internet forums: Rental cars (you’d have learned) are disproportionately registered in Texas, where vehicle registration fees are low, leading to a surfeit of Texas plates in other states. This internet factoid is now so well worn that it’s even been mentioned by real news outlets like Denver’s Channel 7.

The problem with this answer is that there’s no evidence for it. Rental companies say they register their cars in whatever state they take initial delivery in—and, in any case, it doesn’t seem cost-effective to pay interstate transport charges just to save a hundred bucks or so on registration.

So what about your theory? Texas’ monochrome plates do seem easy to counterfeit (it helps that the numbers on them are just printed, not stamped into the living metal like they are in Oregon), and the fact that they use a window sticker instead of a plate tag to show current registration is convenient. Then again, for $30 to $80, online vendors will create a full-color “replica” plate from any state, with any combination of letters and numbers, no questions asked, so there’s no particular reason for local scam artists to pick Texas.

Or any other state! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but with a short-staffed Portland Police Bureau currently deemphasizing minor violations, plenty of sketchy mofos are driving around Portland with no license plates at all. Why bother with fancy counterfeit plates when a Denny’s menu with “F DA 5-0″ written on it in Sharpie will achieve the same result?

You’re probably experiencing what psychologists call the “frequency illusion” (aka the Baader-Meinhof effect): Once you’ve noticed something out of the ordinary, you start seeing it everywhere. There’s no conspiracy; Texas is just a big state with a lot of cars that’s also the third-most-frequent source of in-migration to Oregon (after Washington and California). Yet another fun idea torpedoed by workaday reality! (Also, they’re not really making a Friends reunion about Chandler’s funeral. You’re welcome.)

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.