Officials at the North Carolina DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) have been forced to recall over 10,000 vehicle licence plates after they were found to contain offensive text message lingo.

The problem was uncovered after Mary Ann Hardee, 60, from Fayetteville, N.C became self conscious when her grand children started laughing at her “WTF” licence plate.

Her WTF plate was issued last year as one of around 240 different letter combinations used on more than 2 million plates. Hardee contacted DMV officials in July and has finally been given a new plate free of charge by DMV Commissioner Bill Gore. He has also recalled over 10,000 further plates including 9,998 ones that include the letters WTF.

In the past the DMV and the UK DVLA has been concerned with keeping offensive words from our number plates but the rise of SMS lingo makes their job much harder. The DMV has come up with a novel solution by partnering with a text message dictionary netlingo.com to make sure they don’t issue any more embarrassing plates.

Other recalled numbers include XXX, NME and LOL.