Since hit-and-run drivers who evade justice pose a considerable risk to our lives and result in raised auto insurance premiums for us all, it is essential for vehicles to carry a unique identifying number in large print that can be read many car lengths away by the victims or bystanders. Yet although all cars have a large print license plate number that is unique in that vehicles state, the number is virtually useless for catching the offender if you dont know the state in which the vehicle is registered, which is only written in relatively fine print on the license plate. Despite homeland security efforts to get the various law enforcement agencies to work together, our nation still does not have any system which would allow any law enforcement officer to check a license plate number in all 50 states at once, and no enforcement officer has time to make more than 2-3 requests to different states to check a license plate number, though they probably put forth a little more effort if someone was maimed or killed. The plate colors are of limited help even if you arent color blind, because they look dramatically different at night under streetlights, and many states offer commemorative plates that dont hold to the state color scheme.

Therefore, to better enable citizens to aid law enforcement in getting dangerous offenders off of the roads before they hurt or kill someone (else), we petition Congress to rapidly pass a law with at least some, if not all, of the following features:
1. Require all states to put the two character unique state postal abbreviations on the license plate at the same height or larger than the license number itself.
2. Create a national user interface that would only be accessible to law enforcement officers that would enable their request to check a license plate number to simultaneously check all 50 states databases at once.
3. Require all auto repair shops and auto body shops to report front end damage on vehicles to a national database accessible only to law enforcement officers, including the contact info for the reporting person, the damaged vehicles license plate, the date and place the vehicle was brought in for servicing (or the damage was first seen), and digital photographs of the damage at the time the car was brought in, BEFORE they erase the evidence by fixing the car. Private citizens who see front end damage on vehicles ought to be able to report the same information to this national database, too.

I suggest a database of only front end damage because while some hit & run drivers may do their damage while driving in reverse, it is far less likely that they would be moving fast enough in reverse to cause injuries or fatalities (except to pedestrians, which might not even damage the culprits vehicle), and because damage to the rear or other sides of a vehicle might be far more likely to occur to vehicles that were not at fault in an accident, and it is important to narrow the database to the most likely suspects and exclude victims if it is to work well. This reporting requirement is not a hardship for the businesses, as any shop that does claims work for insurance companies already collects and reports all of this information to the clients insurance company. While this wont prove who was at the wheel during an accident, it may help law enforcement to establish which insurance company is liable for any harm caused by a hit and run driver, and the resulting increase in the premiums of the at-fault vehicle may help get bad drivers off of the road before they can do more damage, even in the absence of sufficient evidence to prosecute an individual driver. There is little chance of this database harming innocent vehicle owners, because if there wasnt a conclusive match of license plate, damage, and plausible date and place, law enforcement should not reveal the results to the victim or the victims insurance company for potential recovery of damages.

The author will not use your e-mail address except to inform you of progress in getting such a law passed, or the opportunity to further assist towards that goal.