An X-rated motor car???

It seems a motorist from Huntsville, AL is having problems with his choice of vanity license plate.

For Huntsville resident Scottie Roberson, the letter X -- seven of them, to be exact -- led to more than $19,000 in Birmingham parking tickets.

Roberson said he has been to Birmingham only once in the past five years and left without a ticket. He said city officials told him the tickets were issued by mistake because of his vanity plate -- XXXXXXX.

Roberson, 38, said the plate is an homage to his days of building custom cars, when he was given the nickname "Racer X." He uses seven X's, he said, because seven is his favorite number.

When Birmingham parking patrols find cars without license plates parked illegally or at expired meters, they enter seven X's in place of the plate number, city officials said. The parking citation form calls for a plate number, and the practice is to use X's when no number is available.

. . .

City spokeswoman April Odom acknowledged on Thursday that Roberson had wrongly received the tickets because of the system and said the fines were being dismissed.

City officials are working to change the entry system to keep Roberson from receiving any additional tickets, Odom said.

"Maybe we need to go with nine X's, or maybe we just need to leave that part blank altogether," Birmingham Traffic Engineer Gregory Dawkins said.

There's more at the link.

Sounds like a typical bureaucracy, blowing smoke out of their collective X-haust!



Peter