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Comment by x1798DE | Hacker News Reader

>FE-Schrift has been the only typeface used on new vehicle registration plates of Germany since November 2000, except for plates issued to military-registered vehicles, which still use the former DIN 1451 typeface.

Interesting that the the military vehicles don't get it. It makes some sense that they wouldn't need it, but I can't imagine that it would hurt to have it.

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I guess they still have 1 million plates in some storage facility. Nah, jokes aside: what they actually do is to not only legally, but practically issue their own plates, which would include stamping them. Also, they don't use the reflective background white. So not only they don't need it, they also have reasons to continue with the old variant. (And actually, they might indeed have a huge stock of them. Military supplies are often aquired at ridiculous numbers.)

(PS: Sorry, auto-correct inserted a typo, just fixed)

"Nah, Jones aside"

What does this phrase mean?

Might be an autocorrected "jokes aside"

That makes sense. Thank you. It's poor attempt at humor if the comment ends by proposing the punchline as an explanation.

Why would it matter how many plates they have unless they stamp them ahead of time?

The police issues their own plates as well and they manage fine.

Police does use the EU variant for the plates, though. You're right, of course they could go with FE Schrift on their old (non-reflective, non-EU) plates. That would, however, be a new combination that would match neither the new civil plates nor the old ones.

I think that is just a function of military vehicles being excempt from that law in the first place. To force them to also use the standard font would mean changing a totally different law, maybe even add a whole new one if the current status is not defined in federal laws but only in some military-interal regulation. Not that that is impossible, but there is little motivation either.

> Interesting that the the military vehicles don't get it.

Note to others: also "civilian", mostly un-marked car models, buses, trucks etc. get the old-style, non reflective plates in our military.

Then again, their layout looks vastly different from civilian plates, so someone forging a BW plate doesn't really gain anything.

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