LINCOLN, NEB. — Some Nebraskans are turning their noses up at the state's new computer-generated, flat license plates.
"They looked like cardboard," opined Steve Davis of Lincoln.
In fact, Davis complained so much on a recent trip to the Lancaster County motor vehicles office that an office worker scrounged up traditional steel plates for his motorcycle.
Davis said he understands there will be no steel plates to find next year, when every vehicle in the state will switch to the new flat plates.
While some call the looks of the new plates flimsy or cheap, others are lauding the switch to the lightweight aluminum plates.
A box of 50 new plates weighs 30 pounds less than a box of the old steel plates, said Beverly Neth, director of Nebraska's Department of Motor Vehicles. The new plates also are easy to read -- with clearer and more defined lines -- and have earned approval from police, Neth said.
A year ago, Nebraska State Penitentiary inmates began making the flat plates with equipment leased from 3-M.
The change is a mixed blessing for the prison industry, which puts out all of Nebraska's license plates. The old process was labor-intensive and kept 35 to 40 inmates busy. The new computer-run process uses about 20 inmates, said John McGovern, superintendent of Cornhusker Industries at the penitentiary.
"That's the bad news for us, since it is our mission to employ inmates," he said. "But we are teaching a much more highly technical skill. So those folks are able to go out and use that experience as a basis to get a job."
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