vehicles 0.4.1 → 0.8.0

data/data/plates/us-as.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,454 @@
+# plates/us-as.yml — American Samoa (PRD-PLATES gate L2, territories group).
+#
+# AMERICAN SAMOA CARRIES THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL LEGAL FINDING IN THE ENTIRE US
+# PASS, AND IT IS NOT ABOUT PLATES. The United States Copyright Office states
+# that "US federal copyright law applies in the US Virgin Islands, Guam, and the
+# Northern Mariana Islands BUT NOT IN AMERICAN SAMOA", because 17 U.S.C. § 101's
+# geographical definition of "the United States" reaches the several States, the
+# District of Columbia, and the ORGANIZED territories — and American Samoa is
+# unorganized and unincorporated. American Samoa therefore sits OUTSIDE the
+# geographic scope of the Copyright Act. That is a stronger position than
+# Florida's, which rests on state constitutional law and a 2004 decision; here
+# the federal statute simply does not reach. See `artwork_risk`.
+#
+# THE PLATE LAW ITSELF IS THE THINNEST IN THE GROUP AND THIS FILE SAYS SO
+# THROUGHOUT. Title 22 of the American Samoa Code Annotated, Chapter 10
+# ("Vehicle Licensing and Registration"), is SEVEN SECTIONS LONG — 22.1001 to
+# 22.1007 — and legislates the number of tags, where they go, how they are
+# validated and what they cost. It legislates NOTHING about format, colour,
+# dimension, class prefixes or specialty programmes. Every claim below is
+# either from those seven sections or is marked as secondary.
+#
+# WHAT IS DELIBERATELY NOT HERE (PRD-PLATES §2.5): individual specialty DESIGNS.
+jurisdiction: us-as
+authority:
+  name: American Samoa Department of Public Safety — Office of Motor Vehicles (the "Commissioner" of A.S.C.A. Title 22)
+  url: "https://asbar.org/section/title-22-highways-and-motor-vehicles/chapter-10-vehicle-licensing-and-registration/"
+binding: vehicle
+statute_edition: >-
+  American Samoa Code Annotated, Title 22 ("Highways and Motor Vehicles"),
+  Chapter 10, as served by the American Samoa Bar Association — the standing
+  public host of the ASCA. The Bar's own code index is captioned "Updated
+  Annotated Code by Title (as of August 2021)", so the served text is a 2021
+  compilation and later amendments were NOT checked (recorded gap).
+authority_url_note: >-
+  American Samoa's Department of Public Safety publishes no reachable motor
+  vehicle page, and americansamoa.gov, while reachable, surfaced no plate
+  content. The authority URL therefore points at the statutory chapter itself,
+  which is the primary-source home of every claim in this file. The
+  "Commissioner" named throughout Chapter 10 is the officer the 1977 amendment
+  substituted for the "Treasurer", per the Bar's own amendment note.
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# artwork_risk — required per jurisdiction by PRD-PLATES §4 / §7.1.
+# THIS IS THE STRONGEST POSTURE IN THE US DATASET AND IT DESERVES ITS SPACE.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+artwork_risk:
+  posture: outside-us-copyright-scope
+  basis: >-
+    American Samoa is the only US jurisdiction in this dataset where the question
+    is not "does this government claim copyright?" but "does the Copyright Act
+    reach here at all?" — and the answer, from the US Copyright Office, is no.
+    Wikimedia Commons quotes the position directly: US copyright law "applies in
+    all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands,
+    Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, BUT DOES NOT APPLY IN AMERICAN
+    SAMOA", grounding it in 17 U.S.C. § 101's definition of "the United States"
+    in a geographical sense, which reaches the several States, DC and the
+    ORGANIZED territories under US jurisdiction. American Samoa is UNORGANIZED
+    and unincorporated and is therefore excluded. Commons operationalises this
+    with a dedicated tag, {{PD-American Samoa}}, "used for works made in American
+    Samoa so long as the work has not been copyrighted elsewhere in the United
+    States", and maintains a country-specific rules page for the territory.
+  caveat: >-
+    STATED SO THE POSTURE IS NOT OVERREAD. The exclusion is GEOGRAPHIC, and the
+    Commons tag's own condition preserves the limit: a work made in American
+    Samoa is treated as public domain "SO LONG AS THE WORK HAS NOT BEEN
+    COPYRIGHTED ELSEWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES". A plate design commissioned
+    from, or first fixed by, a mainland or Hawaii-based manufacturer could
+    therefore be protected notwithstanding the territorial exclusion, and nothing
+    in this pass establishes where American Samoa's plate artwork was authored.
+    Additionally, no American Samoa territorial copyright statute was searched for
+    successfully, so whether the territory has enacted its own protection regime
+    is UNRESEARCHED — the federal Act's silence is not the same as a legal vacuum.
+  conclusion: >-
+    Treat American Samoa as the most favourable artwork posture in the US
+    dataset, ahead of Florida, but do NOT treat it as unconditional. The
+    conditions above are real and unresolved. The practical consequence for this
+    programme is that American Samoa is the strongest candidate anywhere in the
+    US for an EMBLEM-SLOT UPGRADE under PRD-PLATES §7.1 — where artwork_risk and
+    the _art ledger must both clear, this jurisdiction clears the first test on
+    stronger grounds than any state does.
+  edicts: >-
+    Independent of all of the above, edicts of government are public domain at
+    every level ({{PD-US-GovEdict}}), so A.S.C.A. Title 22 is free to use
+    regardless of how the territorial-scope question resolves.
+  emblem_rule: >-
+    PRD-PLATES §3's placeholder default STILL APPLIES for now, and deliberately:
+    the favourable copyright position does not touch the separate protection
+    regimes for flags and seals, and the caveat above is unresolved. Render
+    `emblem: {present: true, rendered: placeholder}` — but flag this jurisdiction
+    to the art-tier owner as the highest-value place to do the affirmative
+    clearance work, because the upside here is larger than anywhere else.
+  photograph_caution: >-
+    plateshack.com and worldlicenseplates.com carry no reusable licence and are
+    treated as all rights reserved; no image was copied. Note the sharp
+    distinction that matters here: even in a jurisdiction outside the Copyright
+    Act's scope, a PHOTOGRAPH taken elsewhere and uploaded by a mainland
+    contributor carries that photographer's own copyright under the law of the
+    place it was made. The territorial exclusion frees the DESIGN question, never
+    the PHOTOGRAPH question, and our own-SVG rule keeps the two apart.
+  sources:
+    - "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/United_States  # THE FINDING: the US Copyright Office position that federal copyright law does NOT apply in American Samoa, quoted with its 17 U.S.C. § 101 basis; the US Territories tag list; and the pointer to Commons:Copyright rules by territory/American Samoa"
+    - "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-American_Samoa  # the dedicated Commons tag exists and is a primary licence tag, with its 'not copyrighted elsewhere in the United States' condition"
+    - "https://asbar.org/section/title-22-highways-and-motor-vehicles/chapter-10-vehicle-licensing-and-registration/  # A.S.C.A. Title 22 ch. 10 — an edict of government, PD at every level"
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# The US standards chain. NOTHING here quotes SAE J686 (paywalled, unpinned).
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+us_standards:
+  no_federal_mandate: true
+  american_samoa_position: >-
+    A.S.C.A. Title 22 references no external standard and legislates no
+    dimension. It does legislate its own LEGIBILITY DISTANCE — 22.1003(1)
+    requires the tags to be "plainly visible for a distance of 50 feet" — which
+    is the same figure the CNMI legislates and two thirds of AAMVA's recommended
+    75 feet. Two Pacific territories independently landing on 50 feet is worth
+    noting; whether that is common drafting ancestry or coincidence is unresolved.
+  aamva_edition_3:
+    dimensions_delegated: "AAMVA §3.1 delegates dimensions and bolt holes to SAE J686, whose text is PAYWALLED and was NOT obtained. No J686 dimension is quoted here."
+    retroreflectivity: "AAMVA §3.3 recommends readability from at least 75 feet in both daylight and darkness. American Samoa legislates 50 feet plus a separate ILLUMINATION duty (22.1003(2), cross-referring to 22.1101(e)), which is a different and arguably more precise way of reaching the night-time case than a reflectivity spec"
+    character_layout: "AAMVA §2.2: characters at least 2.5 in high, spaced at least 0.25 in apart, stroke weight 0.2-0.4 in"
+    replacement_cycle: "AAMVA §1.1 recommends a 7-10 year replacement cycle. American Samoa legislates a REPLACEMENT TRIGGER instead of a cycle: 22.1002(f) issues two new tags only to an applicant registering a vehicle not registered in the Territory in the PRECEDING FIVE YEARS, or whose tags were lost or stolen. Tags otherwise persist indefinitely behind annual decals"
+    source: "https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-726240473163/License-Plate-Standard-Edition-3_September-2025-Update.pdf"
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# Display rules — statutory, and American Samoa uses the term "LICENSE TAGS"
+# rather than "license plates" throughout, which is preserved here.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+display_rules:
+  default: >-
+    TWO tags, front and rear. 22.1003, verbatim: "License tags shall be displayed
+    only on the vehicle for which they were issued, and in the following manner:
+    (1) ONE FIRMLY ATTACHED TO THE FRONT AND THE OTHER FIRMLY ATTACHED TO THE
+    REAR of the vehicle at all times, which shall at all times be kept clean and
+    PLAINLY VISIBLE FOR A DISTANCE OF 50 FEET; (2) the license tags shall be
+    PROPERLY ILLUMINATED in accordance with subsection (e) of 22.1101."
+  tag_issuance: >-
+    22.1002(f): the Commissioner issues TWO license tags to each applicant who is
+    either (1) registering a vehicle not registered in the Territory in the
+    preceding FIVE YEARS, or (2) whose tags have been lost or stolen, on proof.
+    Replacement of lost or stolen tags costs $22.00. So American Samoa does NOT
+    reissue tags at every registration — a returning vehicle keeps its tags, and
+    the five-year rule is the only routine trigger for new metal.
+  validation: >-
+    DECALS ON THE TAGS, not a windshield sticker. 22.1002(c): on satisfactory
+    compliance "the Commissioner shall issue 2 DECALS to the applicant WHICH
+    DECALS DENOMINATE THE PERIOD FOR WHICH REGISTRATION IS EFFECTIVE AND ARE TO BE
+    PLACED ON THE LICENSE TAGS." Two decals for two tags. Photographic evidence
+    corroborates month-and-year decals (January 2024, October 2023, August 2019,
+    January 2017 among many) and, notably, TAGS CARRYING SEVERAL YEARS' DECALS AT
+    ONCE — "August 2019 through August 21 expirations" and "January 2017 through
+    January 2023 expirations" on single plates — which is exactly what the
+    five-year reissue rule predicts.
+  expiration: "22.1004: all motor vehicle licenses expire annually at times designated by the Commissioner by rule; the Commissioner may allow up to 30 days' grace to obtain the inspection certificate"
+  registration_conditions: >-
+    22.1002(b): no license issues without (1) payment of the fee, (2) a valid
+    inspection certificate under 22.1201 et seq., (3) certification of insurance
+    effective for the licence period under 22.2001 et seq., and (4) issuance of a
+    valid motor vehicle registration. American Samoa's courts have described this
+    as effectively conditioning use of the public highways on maintaining
+    insurance (Pu'u v. Lepule, 8 A.S.R.2d 68 (1988)).
+  requirement: "22.1001: 'No motor vehicle may be operated on any highway in American Samoa without a valid registration and VEHICLE LICENSE TAGS as required by this chapter.'"
+  sources:
+    - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1003-display-of-license/  # 22.1003 (1972, PL 12-65 § 1): one tag front, one rear, at all times, clean, plainly visible at 50 feet, properly illuminated per 22.1101(e)"
+    - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1002-application-for-and-issuance-of-license-fees/  # 22.1002: (b) the four preconditions; (c) two decals denominating the registration period, placed ON the tags; (d) the fee schedule; (f) two tags on first registration or after five years' absence, or on proof of loss or theft, $22.00 replacement; (g) $7.00 of each fee to a DPS law-enforcement and production fund"
+    - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1004-expiration-of-license/  # 22.1004 (1972, PL 12-65 § 1; amended 1977, PL 15-41 § 2): annual expiry at times set by the Commissioner by rule, up to 30 days' inspection grace, and the Bar's note that the 1977 amendment substituted 'Commissioner' for 'Treasurer'"
+    - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1001-motor-vehicle-registration-and-license-required/  # 22.1001 (1972, PL 12-65 § 1): the operating prohibition, plus the annotated case notes including Pu'u v. Lepule, 8 A.S.R.2d 68 (1988) and Foma'i v. Samana, 4 A.S.R.2d 102 (1987)"
+
+series:
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # THE STANDARD-ISSUE SERIES. American Samoa is the only jurisdiction in the
+  # territories group with an ALL-NUMERIC standard serial.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-as-standard
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, trailer]
+    period: { start: 1972 }
+    period_evidence: statutory-enactment-date-upper-bound
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "9999"
+      regex: '\A\d+\z'
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          A.S.C.A. TITLE 22 STATES NO SERIAL GRAMMAR AT ALL — not an alphabet, not
+          a width, not an exclusion. The all-numeric form is reported by a
+          Wikipedia locator (four digits, continuously since 1967) and
+          independently corroborated by worldlicenseplates' American Samoa plate
+          history. The regex therefore claims a FORM (numeric) and makes NO WIDTH
+          CLAIM, exactly as us-fl-horseless-carriage does for the same reason: an
+          unbounded quantifier is the honest encoding of a statute that fixes no
+          width. There is no `regex_statutory` because there is no statutory bound
+          to encode.
+      pattern_note: >-
+        The pattern shows the four-digit form the sources report. `matching:
+        strict` because an all-numeric serial lies inside the (empty) statutory
+        constraint and a match is a real claim about this series.
+      progression: "the locator reports the range 0001 to 9999 — a single flat numeric space with no block structure, which is what a territory of American Samoa's fleet size would be expected to need"
+    design:
+      plate: { w: 12, h: 6, unit: in, w_mm: 304.8, h_mm: 152.4 }
+      plate_dimension_note: >-
+        NOT IN ANY AMERICAN SAMOA INSTRUMENT. 12 x 6 in aluminium is
+        locator-reported, together with the claim that American Samoa first issued
+        a 6 x 12 in plate in 1977 — i.e. that it adopted the North American
+        convention LATE, five years after the current licensing chapter was
+        enacted. That is an interesting claim and it is NOT asserted here; the
+        locator attributes it to a collector-journal article (Garrish, C.,
+        "Reconsidering the Standard Plate Size", Plates 62(5), October 2016) which
+        was not obtained. Recorded as a lead, not a fact.
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      colour_note: >-
+        NO HEX IS RECORDED. The locator describes the current base as "black on
+        reflective graphic featuring Fatu Rock" — a GRAPHIC background, not a flat
+        colour, which is precisely the case where assigning a single background hex
+        would be inventing data. The foreground is described as black but no
+        instrument states it. Both are left absent with their descriptions
+        recorded.
+      foreground_description: "black (locator-grade)"
+      legend_top: "AMERICAN SAMOA"
+      legend_slogan_reported: "Motu O Fiafiaga"
+      legend_slogan_note: >-
+        The locator glosses this as "Island of Paradise". It is Samoan and it is
+        reported, not sourced — no American Samoa instrument prescribes any legend,
+        unlike Guam, where 16 GCA § 7120(b) puts the word "Guam" on every plate by
+        law, or the CNMI, where 9 CMC § 2116(c)(1) confirms the HAFA ADAI line.
+      graphic: { present: true, rendered: placeholder, description: "Fatu Rock (Fatu ma Futi) scenic graphic across the plate face — locator-grade description, from no instrument and no drawing" }
+      emblem: { present: true, rendered: placeholder }
+      band: { side: none }
+      rear_differs: false
+    validation: "two decals per registration, one for each tag, denominating the registration period (22.1002(c)) — see display_rules"
+    previous_base_reported:
+      note: >-
+        DELIBERATELY NOT MINTED AS A SERIES, per PRD-PLATES §4's rule that
+        Wikipedia's era tables are not sourced years. The locator reports a 2011
+        changeover to the Fatu Rock base and, before that, "12-YY" year-indexed
+        serials 1945-1951, three digits 1952-1966, and four digits from 1967. NO
+        PRIMARY establishes any of those boundaries: A.S.C.A. Title 22 is
+        format-silent and American Samoa publishes no reachable plate instrument.
+        Rather than mint dated ids on folklore boundaries and then alias them
+        (PRD-QUALITY I-5/I-6), the boundaries are recorded here and a dated series
+        is added when a primary lands.
+      reported_boundaries: ["1945-1951 12-YY (year-indexed)", "1952-1966 three digits", "1967-present four digits", "2011-present Fatu Rock base"]
+      evidence: locator-only
+    class_prefix_table_reported:
+      note: >-
+        AMERICAN SAMOA ENCODES VEHICLE CLASS AND GOVERNMENT AGENCY IN A LETTER
+        PREFIX ON THE SERIAL, and this is the territory's single most interesting
+        plate fact. It is recorded here as a REPORTED TABLE, not as a decode
+        table, because its only source is worldlicenseplates' American Samoa page —
+        an unlicensed enthusiast site — corroborated only in part by dated
+        photographs on plateshack of plates captioned taxi, rental, dealer and
+        government. It is included because a parse API that meets an American Samoa
+        plate reading "AC 123" and has never been told that AC means Agriculture
+        will guess wrong, and because publishing the table WITH its provenance
+        grade is more useful than withholding it. IT MUST BE VERIFIED AGAINST AN
+        AMERICAN SAMOA PRIMARY BEFORE ANY CONSUMER DECODES FROM IT.
+      evidence: secondary-single-source
+      reported_prefixes:
+        AC: Agriculture
+        AP: Airport Authority
+        C: Cargo
+        CC: Community College
+        CF: Correctional Facility
+        CI: Criminal Investigation
+        CJ: Criminal Justice
+        CP: Commercial Bus
+        CT: Commercial Truck
+        DM: University
+        DOT: Coastguard
+        DPS: Department of Public Safety
+        EC: Early Childhood Department
+        ED: Education Department
+        EPA: Environmental Protection Agency
+        FA: Federal Aviation Administration
+        FD: Fire Department
+        GO: Governor
+        GS: Government Supply
+        IP: Important Person
+        MB: Motorcycle
+        MC: Medical Clinic
+        MD: Medical Doctor
+        MP: Motor Pool
+        MS: Medical Services
+        MT: Manpower Training
+        PD: Police Department
+        PS: Department of Public Safety
+        PW: Public Works
+        PWD: Public Works Department
+        R: Rental Car
+        SE: Special Education
+        SS: Social Security Administration
+        ST: School Transport
+        T: Taxi
+        TA: Territorial Auditor
+        TT: Tow Truck
+        TV: Television Station
+        US: United States Congressman
+        UT: Utility Division
+        WM: Weights and Measures
+        WP: Power Authority
+        WR: Wrecker
+      internal_inconsistencies: >-
+        RECORDED RATHER THAN CLEANED UP, because the inconsistencies are evidence
+        about the source's reliability. DPS and PS are both given as Department of
+        Public Safety; PW and PWD are both given as Public Works; and the source
+        itself marks PM and VR as unknown. A table with duplicate keys for one
+        agency and self-declared unknowns is a collector's reconstruction, not a
+        register, and its confidence should be read accordingly.
+      motorcycle_note: >-
+        NOTE THE MB PREFIX. If it is real, American Samoa serialises motorcycles
+        with a class prefix on the same numeric space rather than with a separate
+        reduced-size series, which would make it unlike most US jurisdictions. No
+        motorcycle series is minted in this file on the strength of a single table
+        row (recorded gap).
+    region_encoding: >-
+      NONE. American Samoa's prefix system encodes CLASS AND AGENCY, not
+      geography, and no source suggests any island or district coding — which is
+      consistent with a territory whose fleet is concentrated on Tutuila.
+    sources:
+      - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1002-application-for-and-issuance-of-license-fees/  # 22.1002 — the whole statutory content of an American Samoa standard registration: the four preconditions, two decals placed on the tags, the fee schedule ($32.00 motor vehicle plus $12.00 per ton, $32.00 renewal, $2.00 bicycle, $10.00 titles and transfers, $9.00 late penalty), two tags on first registration or after five years' absence, $22.00 tag replacement, and the $7.00 per-fee allocation to a DPS fund for law-enforcement costs and for PRODUCTION of driver licences and vehicle registrations"
+      - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1003-display-of-license/  # 22.1003: front and rear display, 50-foot legibility, illumination"
+      - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1001-motor-vehicle-registration-and-license-required/  # 22.1001: the 'valid registration and vehicle license tags' requirement, and the statute's own vocabulary — American Samoa says TAGS, not plates"
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_American_Samoa  # LOCATOR ONLY (PRD-PLATES §4): the four-digit numeric serial from 1967 with range 0001-9999, the 2011 Fatu Rock base, the 'Motu O Fiafiaga' slogan, 12x6 in aluminium, the reported 1977 adoption of the 6x12 standard, and the AC (agriculture) and R (rental) prefixes"
+      - "http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/world/PA_AMSA.html  # CORROBORATION + GAP-FINDER (PRD-PLATES §4): the full reported class/agency prefix table transcribed above as REPORTED data, the plate history from 1927, and the separate non-passenger categories (Cargo, Commercial Bus, Commercial Truck, Government Official, Government 2020 Series, Motorcycle, Public Service Vehicle, Rental Vehicle, Taxi). No licence statement on the site — treated as all rights reserved; facts only, no text or images copied"
+      - "http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/American_Samoa/asy2k.html  # CORROBORATION: dated photographs establishing multi-year decal stacking on single tags ('August 2019 through August 21', 'January 2017 through January 2023'), which is the practical confirmation of 22.1002(f)'s five-year reissue rule; plus dated taxi, rental, dealer, government and US Congressional-delegate plates"
+      - "https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-726240473163/License-Plate-Standard-Edition-3_September-2025-Update.pdf  # AAMVA Ed.3 geometry and the 75-foot legibility recommendation against which American Samoa's statutory 50 feet is compared"
+    notes: >-
+      AMERICAN SAMOA STANDARD ISSUE. THE ID IS DELIBERATELY UNDATED and the period
+      is an UPPER BOUND: `start: 1972` is the enactment of PL 12-65, the act that
+      produced the current Chapter 10, and the four-digit numeric arrangement is
+      reported to predate it by five years. It is recorded as the instrument date
+      rather than invented. THREE THINGS MAKE THIS THE MOST DISTINCTIVE STANDARD
+      SERIES IN THE TERRITORIES GROUP. First, it is ALL-NUMERIC, the only one in
+      the group, which means an American Samoa plate carries no letters at all
+      unless it carries a CLASS PREFIX — so the presence of letters is itself a
+      classification signal. Second, TAGS ARE NOT REISSUED at every registration:
+      22.1002(f)'s five-year rule means a single pair of tags can accumulate half a
+      decade of decals, and the photographs prove it does. Third, the statute calls
+      them TAGS throughout, which is preserved here rather than normalised, because
+      a jurisdiction's own vocabulary is a fact about it.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # CORE DISTINCT CLASSES. American Samoa demonstrably serialises these
+  # separately — the reported prefix table and dated photographs agree — but
+  # NOTHING about them is in the statute. Every one is `matching: recall-only`.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-as-government
+    class: government
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 2026 }
+    period_evidence: photographic-in-use-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LL 999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9](?: ?[A-Z0-9])*\z'
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          NO GRAMMAR IS SOURCED. The reported structure is an agency prefix of one
+          to three letters followed by a number in the ordinary numeric space —
+          DPS, PD, ED, GO (Governor), EPA, FD, PWD and about thirty more. The
+          regex is a shape catch-all and claims none of it.
+      pattern_note: "ILLUSTRATIVE PATTERN, CATCH-ALL REGEX. `matching: recall-only` — a match is a shape hit, never a claim that the string is a valid American Samoa government tag."
+    design: { plate: { note: "not sourced" }, emblem: { present: true, rendered: placeholder } }
+    reported_generations: "a distinct government series is reported as first issued in 2005 (with DHS and DOH among the photographed agency prefixes), and a further 'Government (2020 Series)' is listed separately — two generations within twenty years, neither dated by any instrument"
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/world/PA_AMSA.html  # CORROBORATION: the 'Government, Official' and 'Government (2020 Series)' categories, and the agency prefix table transcribed under us-as-standard"
+      - "http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/American_Samoa/asy2k.html  # CORROBORATION: photographs of 'American Samoa Government vehicle plate of type first issued in 2005' with DHS and DOH prefixes read off them, 'Government Vehicle plates in recent use manufactured in 2005' with a PA prefix, and a plate for the non-voting Congressional Representative — the US prefix in the reported table"
+      - "https://asbar.org/code-annotated/22-1005-exemptions/  # 22.1005 'Exemptions' — the statutory hook under which a government fleet would sit; its text was not extracted in this pass (recorded gap)"
+    notes: >-
+      AMERICAN SAMOA GOVERNMENT TAGS. Minted because two independent secondary
+      sources agree that a distinct government series exists and photographs read
+      agency prefixes off actual plates — but with NOTHING taken from the statute,
+      because 22.1005 ("Exemptions") was not extracted and no American Samoa
+      instrument describes a government tag. `period: {start: 2026}` is a read-date
+      upper bound and carries no historical claim. THE CONGRESSIONAL-DELEGATE PLATE
+      is the curiosity worth preserving: American Samoa issues a distinct tag for
+      its non-voting Member of the US House, which is a plate class that exists in
+      only a handful of jurisdictions anywhere.
+
+  - id: us-as-taxi
+    class: taxi
+    categories: [car, van, bus]
+    period: { start: 2026 }
+    period_evidence: photographic-in-use-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LL 999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9](?: ?[A-Z0-9])*\z'
+      charset: { notes: "reported prefix T for taxis; CP is reported for commercial buses and is a separate reported class. No grammar is sourced" }
+      pattern_note: "illustrative pattern, catch-all regex — see us-as-government's note"
+    design: { plate: { note: "not sourced" }, emblem: { present: true, rendered: placeholder } }
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/American_Samoa/asy2k.html  # CORROBORATION: dated photographs of American Samoa TAXI plates with August 2024, September 2015, August 2006 and June 2018 expirations — an eighteen-year run of a continuously distinct taxi tag"
+      - "http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/world/PA_AMSA.html  # CORROBORATION: 'Taxi' as its own non-passenger category, and the reported T prefix"
+    notes: >-
+      AMERICAN SAMOA TAXI TAGS. THE BEST-CORROBORATED NON-STANDARD SERIES IN THIS
+      FILE, and still only photographic: two independent enthusiast sources, one
+      of them with dated photographs spanning 2006 to 2024, agree that American
+      Samoa issues a distinct taxi tag. That is enough to assert the SERIES EXISTS
+      and not nearly enough to assert its grammar, which is why the regex is a
+      catch-all and `matching` is recall-only.
+
+  - id: us-as-agricultural
+    class: agricultural
+    categories: [truck, trailer]
+    period: { start: 2026 }
+    period_evidence: secondary-reported-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LL 999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9](?: ?[A-Z0-9])*\z'
+      charset: { notes: "reported prefix AC. No grammar is sourced" }
+      pattern_note: "illustrative pattern, catch-all regex — see us-as-government's note"
+    design: { plate: { note: "not sourced" }, emblem: { present: true, rendered: placeholder } }
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_American_Samoa  # LOCATOR: the 'AC 123' agriculture serial format, listed among American Samoa's non-passenger types"
+      - "http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/world/PA_AMSA.html  # CORROBORATION: 'AC Agriculture' in the reported prefix table — the one prefix on which the locator and the enthusiast table independently agree, which is why this class is minted and most of the other forty are not"
+    notes: >-
+      AMERICAN SAMOA AGRICULTURE TAGS. Minted for a narrow and explicit reason:
+      of the forty-odd prefixes in the reported table, AC is one of only two that a
+      SECOND, INDEPENDENT source also reports (the other is R for rental cars,
+      which is not minted because _meta/classes.yml has no `rental` value — see
+      the file-level gap note). Two sources agreeing on one prefix is the minimum
+      bar this file applies before giving a reported class its own series, and
+      applying that bar consistently is why the other prefixes stay in the reported
+      table under us-as-standard rather than becoming forty thin series.
+
+  - id: us-as-dealer
+    class: dealer
+    categories: [car, van, truck]
+    period: { start: 2026 }
+    period_evidence: photographic-in-use-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LL 999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9](?: ?[A-Z0-9])*\z'
+      charset: { notes: "no prefix is reported for dealer tags and no grammar is sourced — this series rests on a single photographed example" }
+      pattern_note: "illustrative pattern, catch-all regex — see us-as-government's note"
+    design: { plate: { note: "not sourced" }, emblem: { present: false } }
+    binding: business
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/American_Samoa/asy2k.html  # CORROBORATION ONLY: a photograph captioned 'American Samoa dealer license plate issued in 2000' — the sole evidence that a distinct dealer tag exists"
+    notes: >-
+      AMERICAN SAMOA DEALER TAGS. THE WEAKEST-EVIDENCED SERIES IN THIS FILE and
+      flagged as such: one photograph, one source, no prefix reported, no statute.
+      It is minted rather than dropped only because PRD-PLATES §7's L2 scope names
+      dealer as a core class to spec where the jurisdiction separately serialises
+      it, and a cited placeholder with `matching: recall-only` is more useful to a
+      consumer than silence. A verifier should treat this entry as the first thing
+      to either confirm or delete.