Australians are the only drivers ever to leave the DMV with a smiley face

The alphabet runs from A to Z, with a few weird umlauts thrown in if you're European or a mëtalhëad. But what if the normal letter-number combinations no longer do when you want to express your individuality in the form of a license plate? The Australian state of Queensland has an answer for that: emojis.

For 475 Australian dollars, or $340 U.S., Queensland drivers can choose from five emojis that will be reproduced on their chosen plate, in addition to previous customization styles such as a fancy color. The options are the usual smile, sunglasses, a wink, heart-eyes and the crying-laughter emoji, and they will have to appear together with digits, not by themselves. This means that a 707-horsepower Dodge driver won't be able to have a HELLCAT plate with a cat emoji as decoration, sadly, and people thinking lowly of their econobox cannot go with the more derogatory symbols.

As The Verge reports, concerns have been raised about how well the emoji plates work in their intended job, to distinguish vehicles. The president of Queensland Law Society, Bill Potts, asked the Brisbane Times: "How do you write down the emoji in your number plate after an accident?" But it's a fair point that just like a normal vanity plate, a somewhat annoying smiley in a license plate will stay in your mind better after a hit-and-run than just a regular series of random numbers and letters.