This morning as I was walking out of my hotel to the parking lot I had a double-take trying to find my rental car. I had rented some Japanese mid-size white sedan. As is my habit I try to notice my license plate number when I rent a car to help locating it later should that become necessary. This trip the plate was easy to remember because the letters “RDM” reminded me of the word “random”. So when I saw this white mid-sided toyota with nearly the same license plate it gave me pause. Obviously this person had rented a car from the same agency and ended up at the same hotel. Statistically there are a lot of reasons why this coincidence was more likely. I started looking around the lot to see several other cars with “RDM” and “RDN” plates. Obviously a hotel is a good place to find rental cars. If you are a thief and the barcode sticker on the window is not clue enough, you can just look at the license plate to help identify the tourist.Years ago Florida license plates always had your county listed at the bottom of the plate. If the car was owned by a rental company it would say “Sunshine State”. They also ended all the rental cars with a “Y” or a “Z”. This practice came to a halt once they realized that thieves would target tourists using the plate. It’s my understanding that today when you get your license plate you can choose to have your county or “Sunshine State” listed on the bottom of your plate. Thieves will just have to use the barcode to target tourist like in every other state.
