Number plate spacing?

interstellaflyer

Deleted_User wrote: »

When I see someone with an illegally spaced number plate and/or with extra screw heads to try and spell something I just think KNOB.

I think, 'compensating for having a small penis'

Deastons

Beenie wrote: »

Essex traffic police regularly pull these drivers aside.

I used to read the reports in one of my jobs years ago.

Made for very entertaining reading.

But do you know if they actually got punished for it? I wonder if it really makes a difference anymore - ANPR probably ignores the space in reg numbers anyway.

Car_54

Deastons wrote: »

But do you know if they actually got punished for it? I wonder if it really makes a difference anymore - ANPR probably ignores the space in reg numbers anyway.

The underlying technology - Optical Character Recognition - has been around for decades and is now pretty good at reading all sorts of fonts (and even handwriting, up to a point).


ANPR has some additional challenges (odd angles, weather, light conditions ...) but I'd be surprised if it couldn't read any of the odd-ball fonts that some of the private-plate d***heads favour. Not to mention the odd Arabic etc. plate.

Deastons

Which begs the question, why bother? Just let people put the space where they want.

Mercdriver

Deleted_User wrote: »

When I see someone with an illegally spaced number plate and/or with extra screw heads to try and spell something I just think KNOB.

Don't you mean KNO8?

Beenie

I can't recall much about my time in that particular job. Whether the cases went on for prosecution or whatever, I don't know, and I can't tell you any juicy bits (even if I could remember the details) because I signed the Official Secrets Act.

AndyMc.....

Beenie wrote: »

I can't recall much about my time in that particular job. Whether the cases went on for prosecution or whatever, I don't know, and I can't tell you any juicy bits (even if I could remember the details) because I signed the Official Secrets Act.

So what you're effectively saying is nothing you dealt with went to court.

Car_54

Beenie wrote: »

I can't recall much about my time in that particular job. Whether the cases went on for prosecution or whatever, I don't know, and I can't tell you any juicy bits (even if I could remember the details) because I signed the Official Secrets Act.

It's not because you signed the Act, which applies regardless. Signing is just a bit of theatre to stress the importance.


I'd tell you more but I signed the Act ....;)

AdrianC

Deastons wrote: »

Which begs the question, why bother? Just let people put the space where they want.

And any old character sets?

Near where I used to live, there was a Q7 with a script-face plate that (in the owner's brain) read "LUCYLOU".

Clearly, they were nicked at some point, because it started to wear utterly vanilla legal plates reading "LU57 LOU". Quite often, people like to think that "5" is "S" and "7" is "T", don't they? So that'd be "LUST LOU"... Probably not quite the message the owner was trying to get across. (It doesn't appear to be in use any more - perhaps she either took the hint and didn't like the end result... or failed to take it, and had it withdrawn)



Legibility makes it possible to confuse plates that are similar to others.

Take something like X456ABX. Mis-display that, and it could be mistaken for XAS648X or XA56ABX


In this country, we're very fortunate that we can get replacement plates made up at any factor. If people continue to extract the michael, we may well face a situation where the physical plates can only be supplied by DVLA.


In NL, not only are they only officially supplied, but replacement plates are visibly marked as being replacements, too.

This is the third replacement plate that's been issued with that registration on.

System

Nasqueron wrote: »

Or the flip side, it disguises an old car's age if it's well maintained.

No it doesn't because you cannot get a registration year newer than the date of first registration of the car.