Licence plate lockdown

Unlike UK licence plates, which belong to a particular car, Austrian plates are issued to an insured driver by the insurance companies on behalf of the government. They are yours, and can be used on up to three cars – you only pay an insurance premium for the most expensive. They clip and unclip from their mountings quite easily. But because they belong to the insured person, it is possible for each registration number to carry a residence-specific code portion, along with the wappen or arms of your Bundesland . If you move to a different Bezirk (think of it as about equivalent to a district council) you need to get a new licence plate.

If such a scheme were run in the UK, the first two letters of the licence plate would indicate your place of residence. For London, it would be a London shield symbol plus a borough code – say LA for Lambeth, WE for Westminster, BR for Bromley and so on. Any ‘county lines’ drug dealers here have a very hard time – but that’s not all.

Country areas are naturally suspicious of outsiders even in good times, and the Wuhan virus has magnified mistrust of any vehicle with a ‘foreign’ licence plate – and by foreign, I mean a vehicle from a neighbouring district, never mind out-of-state vehicles or the Satanic chariots carrying the evil W for Vienna. Believe me, after a while non-local vehicles stick out like a sore thumb in the supermarket car park – and you can be sure if a car with plates bearing the shield of Tyrol and LA code that includes Ishgl, the seat of Austria’s après-ski contagion, the store doors would have been locked shut. 

I’m fascinated to learn how the locals will cope with the end-of-lockdown dilemna. They will be riven between mistrust of the outsider and the welcoming of the critical summer tourist Euros. It will be fun to watch. 

And second-homers in the UK can be very grateful for the anonymity of UK licence plates.