The front license plate could soon be a thing of the past on Ohio vehicles. Photo by R. Michael Semple

The transportation bill passed by the Ohio House of Representatives removes the requirement for vehicles to have a front license plate.

If unchanged when the bill passes through the Senate, Ohio will join the 19 other states which no longer require a front plate, among them Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and West Virginia.

State Rep. Michael J. O’Brien, D-Warren, said the move is to accommodate the changing design of vehicles toward more aerodynamic and advanced body styles.

“The Automobile Dealers Association has found as cars are being designed and developed, they’re more aerodynamic in their front ends, and it’s difficult to place license plate brackets on the front of a car,” said O’Brien.

Alistair Weaver, editor-in-chief at Edmunds, an online resource for automotive information, said moves toward electric vehicles could change the shape of cars in the future.

“Historically, in almost every car you have the engine in the front and the trunk at the back. In electrical cars, you now have the batteries in the back, and the traditional look and feel of cars can now look quite different,” he said.

Weaver said plates do nothing for aerodynamics or for the appearance of a car.

“From a purely aesthetic point of view, and we all enjoy how our cars look, I think people will probably rejoice at the removal,” said Weaver.

A move toward smart cars also has designers placing more sensors for parking and cruise control in the front of vehicles. “Number plates can get in the way of that,” said Weaver.

O’Brien said a perk of removing the front license plate is it will be easier to sell cars across state lines.

“Right now if you have a car and you’re selling it to someone in PA, they have holes in the front of their car that they’re not using,” said O’Brien. Likewise, an Ohio resident purchasing a car from Pennsylvania must drill holes and mount a front plate on their car, he said.

The upside of a front plate is its doubles law enforcement’s chances of identifying a vehicle when a crime is caught on camera or seen by an eyewitness, Niles police Chief Jay Holland said.

Holland said he doesn’t have a strong opposition to removing the front plate requirement, but it has been helpful in the past

“Sometimes a hit-skip crash will leave their front plate there, which makes it easy for us to track down,” Holland said.

Howland police Chief Nick Roberts said removing the front license plate probably will set law enforcement back a bit.

“I think it would be of use to keep the front license plate from a law enforcement standpoint,” Roberts said. He said when a vehicle is behind a police cruiser, the officer can often read the front plate in the rear-view mirror to identify the vehicle, which is helpful when officers are responding to a crime in progress.

Officers also have probable cause to pull over Ohio vehicles that do not have a front plate, Roberts said. A citation can be issued for driving without a front plate, he said.

O’Brien noted the culprit in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was famously caught because he was driving with no front license plate. “Ironically enough, in Oklahoma, now you don’t need to have a front license plate,” O’Brien said.