vehicles 0.4.1 → 0.8.0

data/data/plates/us-az.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,430 @@
+# plates/us-az.yml — Arizona (PRD-PLATES gate L2, mountain group).
+#
+# ARIZONA IS THE NAMED ADVERSE STATE, and this pass pins the evidence rather
+# than repeating the assertion. The US research dossier recorded Arizona as
+# "the most adverse posture found" but traced it only to a Wikipedia summary.
+# The underlying instrument is the Arizona Secretary of State's own library
+# policy, and its words are quoted verbatim in `artwork_risk` below, with the
+# statutory hook (A.R.S. § 39-121.03) it points to. Read that section before
+# rendering anything Arizonan.
+#
+# THE OTHER ARIZONA SURPRISE is structural: Arizona's statute delegates almost
+# everything. § 28-2351 gives the director colour and design; § 28-2406 gives
+# the department the number of positions on a personalized plate. There is NO
+# statutory character cap of the Florida (seven) or Colorado (six) kind. What
+# the 2022 amendment to § 28-2351 DOES prescribe is oddly specific and worth
+# the whole file: the STATE NAME's typeface class and height, in law.
+#
+# WHY THE FORMAT SECTION READS AS IT DOES: since February 2021 Arizona's
+# standard serial is SIX ALPHANUMERIC POSITIONS OF WHICH ONLY THE FOURTH IS
+# GUARANTEED A DIGIT. The human-pattern DSL (9=digit, L=letter) has no
+# alphanumeric token, so `pattern` shows one representative arrangement and the
+# REGEX carries the real grammar. That divergence is stated in `pattern_note`
+# rather than papered over — Arizona is the schema stressor for a mixed
+# alphanumeric position, exactly as Japan is for composed fields.
+#
+# WHAT IS NOT HERE (PRD-PLATES §2.5): individual special-plate DESIGNS.
+jurisdiction: us-az
+authority:
+  name: Arizona Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division (ADOT MVD)
+  url: "https://azdot.gov/motor-vehicles/vehicle-services/license-plates"
+binding: owner
+binding_note: >-
+  ARIZONA IS A PLATE-FOLLOWS-THE-OWNER STATE, which makes it the North American
+  cousin of Switzerland and the reason `binding:` exists as a field. ADOT's own
+  guidance is that the plate belongs to the vehicle owner and may be transferred
+  from one vehicle to another; § 28-2356 is titled "Transfer of license plates
+  to another vehicle; credit" and governs the transfer and the credit for
+  unexpired fees. A vehicle-keyed consumer that assumes an Arizona plate
+  identifies a VEHICLE across time will be wrong. (The ADOT page stating the
+  ownership rule could not be fetched in this pass — azdot.gov is behind a
+  Cloudflare challenge that returns 403 to every automated client tried — so the
+  claim rests on § 28-2356's existence plus a locator; recorded honestly.)
+statute_edition: >-
+  Arizona Revised Statutes as served by the Arizona State Legislature at
+  azleg.gov, read in this pass. Title 28, Chapter 7, Article 11 (License Plates
+  Generally, §§ 28-2351 to 28-2356) and Article 12 (Special Plates, § 28-2401
+  onward).
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# artwork_risk — required per jurisdiction by PRD-PLATES §4. THE FLAGGED ONE.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+artwork_risk:
+  posture: copyright-expressly-asserted
+  basis: >-
+    Arizona expressly asserts copyright over state government works. The
+    assertion is made by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records
+    — a division of the Arizona Secretary of State — in its published Website
+    Policies, under the heading "Copyright Policy", verbatim: "Arizona state
+    government works: Unlike federal works, state works are not in the public
+    domain and are protected by copyright. However, public records laws may
+    allow reproduction in some instances. Any user intending to obtain any
+    public records information on this website for a commercial purpose is
+    required under Arizona law to pay a commercial fee as established by the
+    Secretary of State's office. You must follow the procedures described in
+    A.R.S. § 39-121.03 in order to obtain permission to use public records for a
+    commercial purpose." The same page states the contrast case in its own
+    words — "Federal government works: Information in federal publications are
+    not protected by copyright (17 USC 105)" — so the state is drawing the
+    distinction deliberately, not by oversight.
+  fetch_note: >-
+    THE LIVE URL COULD NOT BE FETCHED. azlibrary.gov, azdot.gov and az.gov all
+    sit behind a Cloudflare interstitial that returns HTTP 403 to every
+    automated client attempted in this pass. The quotation above was read from
+    the Internet Archive capture of 15 September 2023, which is cited alongside
+    the live URL below. This is recorded because a claim this consequential
+    should carry its retrieval conditions, and because a future pass should
+    re-verify the live text before anything is rendered.
+  what_this_does_and_does_not_reach: >-
+    It does NOT reach the statutes. Edicts of government are uncopyrightable at
+    every level (PRD-PLATES §4), so §§ 28-2351, 28-2354, 28-2356 and 28-2406 —
+    every legal claim in this file — are public domain regardless of Arizona's
+    posture, and the ADOT-sourced facts are facts. What the posture reaches is
+    the DESIGN: the Four Peaks silhouette, the sunset gradient, the saguaro. In
+    Arizona those are the highest-risk act in the whole programme.
+  emblem_rule: >-
+    STRICTEST PATH, no exceptions. Render `graphic: {present: true, rendered:
+    placeholder}` for the desert scene and the saguaro; do not trace, do not
+    trace from a photograph, do not approximate the Four Peaks silhouette
+    closely enough to be substitutable, and do not embed any Arizona typeface
+    binary. Arizona state seal statutes are UNRESEARCHED — the standing gap
+    from the US dossier §4.5 — and the seal regime is independent of copyright,
+    so it would survive even a favourable copyright answer.
+  photograph_caution: >-
+    The Commons finding cuts the same way here as everywhere: a CC BY-SA tag on
+    an Arizona plate photograph is the PHOTOGRAPHER's licence on the PHOTOGRAPH,
+    and the uploader had no standing over the design. In Arizona that cuts
+    BOTH ways and the second direction matters more than usual — a permissive
+    tag on a photo is no permission at all against a state that has asserted
+    copyright in terms. Because our renders are generated from the statute and
+    never derived from a photograph, neither the photographer's obligations nor
+    the photograph itself is ever in the chain.
+  sources:
+    - "https://azlibrary.gov/website-policies  # Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records (Office of the Arizona Secretary of State), Copyright Policy: 'Arizona state government works: Unlike federal works, state works are not in the public domain and are protected by copyright.' LIVE URL 403s to automated clients; read via https://web.archive.org/web/20230915005643/https://azlibrary.gov/website-policies"
+    - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/39/00121-03.htm  # A.R.S. § 39-121.03, the commercial-purpose public-records procedure the copyright policy routes commercial users through. NOT FETCHED in this pass (azleg.gov returned a socket hang-up on this section twice); pinned as the target to read, and no content is attributed to it here."
+    - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_subnational_governments_of_the_United_States  # LOCATOR ONLY (PRD-PLATES §4) — where the azlibrary.gov pointer was found. The policy itself is what is quoted."
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# The US standards chain.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+us_standards:
+  no_federal_mandate: true
+  chain: "SAE J686 -> AAMVA License Plate Standard Edition 3 (September 2025) -> voluntary state adoption."
+  aamva_edition_3:
+    dimensions_delegated: "AAMVA §3.1 sends dimensions and bolt holes to SAE J686, whose text is PAYWALLED and UNPINNED. No J686 dimension is quoted."
+    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, at least 1.25 in clear of top and bottom edges."
+    jurisdiction_name_layout: >-
+      AAMVA §2.1 recommends the jurisdiction name in the top centre between the
+      bolt holes, at least 0.25 in above the plate number and 0.125 in from the
+      top edge, with jurisdiction characters 0.75-1.0 in. ARIZONA IS THE ONE
+      STATE IN THIS GROUP THAT LEGISLATED ITS OWN VERSION OF THIS RULE, and it
+      lands INSIDE the AAMVA band: § 28-2351, post-24 September 2022, requires
+      the state name in capitals, in a SANS SERIF font, three-fourths of an inch
+      high. That is 0.75 in — the bottom of AAMVA's recommended range, in
+      Arizona law. A rare, checkable instance of voluntary adoption showing up
+      in statute.
+    stacked_characters: "AAMVA: stacked characters are part of the official plate number and no more than two may be stacked. Arizona's statute is silent; the normalisation decision belongs in the parse layer."
+    replacement_cycle: "AAMVA §1.1 recommends a cycle not to exceed 7 to 10 years. Arizona legislates none (recorded gap)."
+    source: "https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-726240473163/License-Plate-Standard-Edition-3_September-2025-Update.pdf"
+  folklore_caution: >-
+    The "1956 AMA standardization agreement" is COMMONLY REPEATED, UNSOURCED
+    (US dossier headline finding 2). The Arizona article does not even offer the
+    ALPCA-magazine footnote the Utah, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico articles
+    carry. Arizona's plate size is not in Title 28 at all — § 28-2351 states a
+    legibility distance, not a dimension (recorded gap).
+
+display_rules:
+  default: >-
+    ONE plate, rear. § 28-2351: "The department shall provide to every owner one
+    license plate for each vehicle registered", with an additional plate
+    obtainable on request and payment of a fee. Rear-only has been the Arizona
+    rule since 1989 (locator-grade for the year).
+  wheelchair_carrier_rule: >-
+    § 28-2354(A)(3) carries a genuinely unusual attachment rule: for a vehicle
+    issued two special plates under § 28-2409, "one plate on the rear of the
+    vehicle and one plate on the operator's wheelchair carrier or wheelchair
+    lift when it is attached to the vehicle". A plate mounted on a removable
+    accessory rather than on the vehicle — the display model has to allow it.
+  legibility: "§ 28-2351: letters and numerals 'of sufficient size to be plainly readable during daylight from a distance of one hundred feet'"
+  contrast_and_state_name: >-
+    § 28-2351, as amended effective 24 September 2022: the background colour
+    must contrast significantly with the letters, numerals and state name, and
+    "The name of this state shall appear on the license plate in capital letters
+    in sans serif font and be three-fourths of an inch in height." This is the
+    most typographically prescriptive plate provision found in this group of
+    five states, and it prescribes a FONT CLASS rather than a font — consistent
+    with PRD-PLATES §6's finding that no surveyed jurisdiction mandates a
+    licensable typeface.
+  reflectivity: "§ 28-2351: 'The director shall coat the license plate with a reflective material that is consistent with the determination of the department regarding the color and design.'"
+  sources:
+    - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02351.htm  # § 28-2351 License plate provided; design: one plate per vehicle, additional plate on request, director determines colour and design, reflective coating, 100-foot daylight legibility, and the post-2022 contrast rule and sans-serif three-quarter-inch state name"
+    - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02354.htm  # § 28-2354 License plates; attachment; civil penalty — including the wheelchair-carrier placement in (A)(3)"
+    - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02356.htm  # § 28-2356 Transfer of license plates to another vehicle; credit — the plate-follows-the-owner mechanism"
+
+series:
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # CURRENT STANDARD ISSUE — the "alphabet soup" generation.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-az-standard-2021
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 2021 }
+    period_evidence: corroboration-only
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLL 9LL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9]{3} ?\d[A-Z0-9]{2}\z'
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          NO STATUTORY CONSTRAINT EXISTS. § 28-2351 gives the director colour
+          and design and says nothing about serial length or alphabet;
+          § 28-2406 hands the department "the number of positions allowed" on a
+          personalized plate. Arizona is therefore the pure delegated case in
+          this group — contrast Florida's seven-character statutory cap and
+          Colorado's six. The grammar recorded here comes from ADOT's own
+          announcement of the 2020 change plus contemporaneous reporting, read
+          through a Wikipedia locator: six positions, every one of which may be
+          a letter OR a digit, EXCEPT the fourth, which is always a digit; each
+          position runs A-Z then 0-9.
+      pattern_note: >-
+        READ THIS BEFORE USING `pattern`. The human-pattern DSL has exactly two
+        tokens, 9 (digit) and L (letter), and Arizona's current serial has
+        FIVE POSITIONS THAT ARE NEITHER — they are alphanumeric. `pattern`
+        therefore shows ONE REPRESENTATIVE ARRANGEMENT ("ABC 1DE", which is the
+        arrangement the locator record itself uses as the exemplar) and the
+        REGEX carries the actual grammar. The round-trip still holds, because
+        every serial the pattern generates is inside the regex; what does not
+        hold is the usual reading that `pattern` describes the alphabet.
+        Arizona is the schema stressor for a mixed alphanumeric position and it
+        should be cited when `format.fields:` is next discussed.
+      progression: >-
+        NOT LEXICOGRAPHIC. ADOT introduced a new plate-coding system in June
+        2020 replacing one dating from the mid-1980s; the resulting serials were
+        reported as "random" but in fact increment in a non-standard order
+        (locator records the 2021-onward order as CEA 1DB — that is, positions
+        advance in a fixed but non-left-to-right sequence). Consequence for the
+        parse API: an Arizona serial's alphabetical position tells you almost
+        nothing about its issue date, and any era inference built on ordinary
+        odometer logic will be wrong.
+    design:
+      plate: { w: 12, h: 6, unit: in, w_mm: 304.8, h_mm: 152.4 }
+      plate_dimension_note: "NOT IN TITLE 28. Arizona states a legibility distance, not a dimension. The 12x6 figure is the North American convention from the AAMVA/SAE chain and is not attributed to any Arizona instrument (recorded gap)."
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      material: "reflective coating mandated by § 28-2351; the specific material is 'consistent with the determination of the department' and no departmental material spec was obtained (recorded gap)"
+      colour_note: >-
+        NO HEX IS CLAIMED. § 28-2351 mandates significant CONTRAST between
+        background and characters and leaves every hue to the director. The
+        design is described by a Wikipedia LOCATOR as a dark green serial on a
+        graphic desert scene — turquoise, white and orange gradient sky, a white
+        setting sun, purple mountains in the shape of Four Peaks, and cacti —
+        with "ARIZONA" screened in turquoise with white outlines at the top and
+        "GRAND CANYON STATE" in dark green below the serial. That is recorded as
+        a lead. Given the artwork posture above, an approximated render must be
+        deliberately unlike it, not faithfully like it.
+      legend_top: "ARIZONA"
+      legend_bottom: "GRAND CANYON STATE"
+      state_name_typography: "capital letters, sans serif font, three-fourths of an inch high (§ 28-2351, post-24 September 2022) — the only statutory typography in this group"
+      graphic: { present: true, rendered: placeholder, description: "desert scene with Four Peaks and saguaro; security threads at plate centre since the 2008 flat-printed generation — locator-grade" }
+      emblem: { present: false }
+      rear_differs: false
+    region_encoding: >-
+      NONE. Arizona used county coding historically (the Wikipedia article keeps
+      a county-coding section) but no modern Arizona serial encodes geography,
+      and the current alphanumeric grammar leaves no positional room for it.
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02351.htm  # § 28-2351: the absence of any statutory serial constraint, the director's design power, the reflective coating, the contrast rule and the sans-serif state-name height"
+      - "https://azdot.gov/adot-news/your-eyes-don%E2%80%99t-deceive-you-new-license-plate-numbers-are-different  # ADOT's own June 2020 announcement of the new plate-numbering system. NOT FETCHED — azdot.gov 403s to automated clients behind Cloudflare; pinned as the primary to read on a browser-capable pass, and no wording is attributed to it here."
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Arizona  # LOCATOR ONLY (PRD-PLATES §4): the February 2021 arrangement change, the six-position alphanumeric grammar with a digit fixed in position four, the non-standard progression order, the AAA 0AA start and the design description. None is asserted as sourced."
+    notes: >-
+      ARIZONA STANDARD ISSUE, CURRENT GENERATION. THE BASE DESIGN IS OLDER THAN
+      THE SERIES: the desert scene dates to 1996 (flat-printed from January
+      2008), and 2021 is a SERIAL-GRAMMAR boundary, not a redesign. The id is
+      dated because the grammar is what distinguishes the series, and
+      `period_evidence: corroboration-only` states plainly that February 2021
+      rests on a locator and contemporaneous press, not on an Arizona
+      instrument. WHY THIS SERIES IS INTERESTING BEYOND ARIZONA: it is the
+      cleanest US example of a state exhausting its serial space and answering
+      with an alphabet change rather than a redesign — 999 ZZZ ran out in
+      mid-January 2008, ABC1234 ran out by April 2020, and the answer both times
+      was more characters or a wider alphabet on the SAME plate.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # ONE SERIES BACK.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-az-standard-2008
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 2008, end: 2020 }
+    period_evidence: corroboration-only
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLL9999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z]{3}\d{4}\z'
+      charset: { notes: "three letters then four numerals, printed with no separator; no statutory constraint applies, for the same reason as the current series" }
+      progression: "sequential from AAA0001 to approximately CWX9999; the CWL0001-CWX9999 block was assigned to rental cars from 2020 (locator-grade)"
+    design:
+      plate: { w: 12, h: 6, unit: in }
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      colour_note: "the same 1996 desert-scene base as the current series, with the serial screened rather than embossed and security threads added at the plate centre. No hex claimed."
+      legend_top: "ARIZONA"
+      legend_bottom: "GRAND CANYON STATE"
+      graphic: { present: true, rendered: placeholder }
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02351.htm  # § 28-2351: the design power under which this arrangement was issued"
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Arizona  # LOCATOR ONLY: the January 2008 to April 2020 window, the exhaustion of 999 ZZZ in mid-January 2008 reported by The Arizona Republic, and the AAA0001-CWX9999 range"
+    notes: >-
+      THE PREVIOUS ARRANGEMENT. Recorded partly for its own sake and partly
+      because the exhaustion story is documented: contemporaneous reporting
+      (The Arizona Republic, 30 April 2008) attributes the seventh character to
+      ADOT running out of combinations "when it issued plate 999 ZZZ in
+      mid-January". A dated exhaustion event is the most useful kind of era
+      evidence a plates dataset can hold, and it is why this series' boundary is
+      better attested than most in this group even though it remains
+      corroboration-grade.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # THE 2020-21 TRANSITIONAL GENERATION — seven positions, recorded because it
+  # is short, real, and still on the road.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-az-standard-2020-transitional
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 2020, end: 2021 }
+    period_evidence: corroboration-only
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLL9LLL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9]{3}\d[A-Z0-9]{3}\z'
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          SEVEN positions, printed without a separator, with the fourth always a
+          digit and every other position alphanumeric — the same rule as the
+          current six-position grammar, one character longer. The locator record
+          says sixty-four arrangements were theoretically available and only
+          eight were used; those eight are not individually sourced here, which
+          is exactly why this series is `recall-only`: the regex is the union of
+          all seven-position strings with a digit in position four, which is
+          deliberately wider than the eight arrangements Arizona actually issued.
+    design:
+      plate: { w: 12, h: 6, unit: in }
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      colour_note: "the same 1996 desert-scene base; no hex claimed"
+      legend_top: "ARIZONA"
+      legend_bottom: "GRAND CANYON STATE"
+      graphic: { present: true, rendered: placeholder }
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Arizona  # LOCATOR ONLY: the April 2020 to January 2021 window, the AAA0AAA-SXA6DTA range, the sixty-four-available/eight-used arrangement count, and the ADOT coding-system change behind it"
+      - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02351.htm  # § 28-2351: the delegated design power that made an arrangement change possible without legislation"
+    notes: >-
+      A NINE-MONTH SERIES, KEPT ON PURPOSE. It is the smallest series in this
+      group and it earns its place three ways: it is the reason the current
+      six-position grammar exists at all; it is still lawfully on the road, so a
+      parser meeting a seven-character Arizona serial with a digit in position
+      four is not looking at an error; and it is the clearest `recall-only` case
+      in the mountain group — a regex written as a union because the members of
+      the union were not individually sourced. Contrast us-az-standard-2021,
+      whose regex IS the grammar and is therefore strict.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # PERSONALIZED.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-az-personalized
+    class: personalized
+    categories: [car, van, truck, motorcycle]
+    period: { start: 2026 }
+    period_evidence: instrument-in-force-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLLLLLL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9]+\z'
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          § 28-2406, verbatim on the only point it addresses: "The department
+          shall determine the number of positions allowed on the personalized
+          special plates." The statute sets NO cap and NO alphabet. The
+          departmental determination was not obtained (azdot.gov is unfetchable
+          from here), so the regex MAKES NO WIDTH CLAIM — an unbounded
+          quantifier, on the same reasoning as us-fl-horseless-carriage's
+          '\A\d+\z'. Recording a guessed maximum would be worse than recording
+          none.
+        refusal_criteria: >-
+          § 28-2406: the department may refuse, suspend, cancel or revoke
+          combinations "that carry connotations that are offensive to good taste
+          and decency", combinations that are misleading, and duplicates of
+          existing plates. The applicant requests; the department decides.
+    design:
+      plate: { w: 12, h: 6, unit: in }
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      note: "personalized configurations are offered on the standard base and on special plate designs; which designs accept personalization was not obtained (recorded gap)"
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02406.htm  # § 28-2406 Personalized special plates: the department determines the number of positions; the good-taste-and-decency, misleading and duplicate refusal grounds; the refuse/suspend/cancel/revoke powers"
+    notes: >-
+      PERSONALIZED PLATES, and a deliberate demonstration of the
+      no-width-claim discipline. Every other state in this group states a
+      personalized character range somewhere — Colorado two to seven in statute,
+      New Mexico one to eight on the MVD's own page — and Arizona states none at
+      any level this pass could reach. The regex says so. PERIOD CAVEAT:
+      `start: 2026` is the statute edition read and is an upper bound; Arizona
+      has issued personalized plates for decades.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # SPECIALTY — THE PROGRAM INDEX, per PRD-PLATES §2.5.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: us-az-special-plate-index
+    class: specialty
+    categories: [car, van, truck, motorcycle]
+    period: { start: 2026 }
+    period_evidence: instrument-in-force-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLL 9LL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9]+(?: [A-Z0-9]+)?\z'
+      charset: { notes: "special plates carry ordinary serials on an alternative design; because no statutory cap exists and no departmental determination was obtained, no width claim is made and the regex is an explicit recall bound" }
+    design:
+      plate: { w: 12, h: 6, unit: in }
+      background: { finish: retroreflective }
+      note: "one design per authorised programme; the designs themselves are L4 scope (PRD-PLATES §2.5) and none is described here"
+      emblem: { present: true, rendered: placeholder }
+    program_index:
+      count: unresearched
+      count_note: >-
+        NO COUNT IS ASSERTED. Arizona's specialty catalogue lives on azdot.gov,
+        which returned HTTP 403 behind a Cloudflare challenge to every automated
+        client attempted, and has no Internet Archive capture under the paths
+        tried. Rather than launder a figure out of a collector site or an
+        encyclopedia, the count is recorded as UNRESEARCHED with the official
+        URLs pinned for a browser-capable pass. This is the same discipline that
+        made Florida's contested "over 100 vs over 120" worth recording: an
+        honest absence beats a sourced-looking number.
+      official_list_url: "https://azdot.gov/motor-vehicles/vehicle-services/license-plates"
+      statutory_frame: >-
+        Arizona authorises special plates BY STATUTE, in Title 28, Chapter 7,
+        Article 12 (§ 28-2401 onward), which is why the catalogue can eventually
+        be enumerated from the code rather than from a web page. § 28-2401
+        supplies the article's definitions — "special plates" means "plates
+        issued pursuant to this article", and "immediate family member" means "a
+        spouse or a parent, child, brother or sister whether by adoption or
+        blood", the latter mattering because several Arizona special plates pass
+        to family. § 28-2402 governs special plate fees; § 28-2403 governs
+        transfers and makes a violation a criminal classification; § 28-2406 is
+        the personalized-plate section modelled separately above.
+      fees_note: "§ 28-2402 (Special plate fees) and § 28-2353 (Special license plate replacement fee) were identified but their figures were not extracted in this pass (recorded gap)."
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.azleg.gov/arsDetail/?title=28  # the Title 28 section index from which Article 11 (28-2351 to 28-2356) and Article 12 (28-2401 onward) were read"
+      - "https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/02401.htm  # § 28-2401 Definitions: 'special plates' means plates issued pursuant to this article; the immediate-family-member definition"
+      - "https://azdot.gov/motor-vehicles/vehicle-services/license-plates  # ADOT MVD's own plate index — PINNED BUT NOT FETCHED (403, Cloudflare). No claim in this entry rests on it."
+    notes: >-
+      THE SPECIAL-PLATE PROGRAM INDEX — one entry for the whole programme, per
+      PRD-PLATES §2.5. IT IS DELIBERATELY THIN, and the thinness is the finding:
+      Arizona is the only state in the mountain group whose issuing agency could
+      not be reached at all. Everything in this file that is stated as fact came
+      from azleg.gov (the legislature) or from an archived Secretary of State
+      policy page; everything ADOT would have supplied — the specialty count,
+      the personalized character limit, the departmental colour and material
+      specifications, the plate-belongs-to-the-owner statement — is recorded as
+      a gap with its URL pinned. A future pass with a browser should start here.