E: 04/03 4D car license plates IG

wdywuk

https://www.instagram.com/p/CpPXyeSI8ik/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

timswf2

Are they road legal?

pstephens

Yes.

3D Number Plates – The Legal Details

To clear up any confusion, 3D plates are 100% LEGAL if you stick to the outlined rules from the DVLA. 

The latest update to UK number plate rules was released in 2021. The DVLA created these outlines to improve road safety, minimise the number of illegal vehicle activities, and clear up any confusion drivers were expressing. The industry is worth £2 billion in the UK alone, so it’s not like the government wants the trade to just come to a stand-still. Instead, improving regulations were designed to enhance the industry’s growth by showcasing to consumers how easy it is to be compliant. 

As a DVLA-certified producer of number plates, we were thrilled to see these changes come into effect as it added that extra layer of legality supporting trusted businesses like ours. The legal terms that a number plate must adhere to are:

• be made from a reflective material – for road safety
• black display characters on a white background (front plate)
• black display characters on a yellow background (rear plate)
• not have a background pattern – so as not to distort the readability of your plate
• be marked to show who supplied the number plate – to assist with thefts and sourcing queries
• be marked with a British Standard number – this is ‘BS AU 145e’ for plates fitted after 1 September 2021
• The characters must not be removable or reflective. If your number plates were fitted after 1 September 2021, they must also be a single shade of black.

As well as these outlined conditions, custom plates must also display the following:

• have 3D (raised) characters
• display certain flags, symbols and identifiers
• display a green flash if you have a zero-emission vehicle

If the rules have been adhered to, you will be fine. Number plates must also have either a ‘BSAU 145d’or a ‘BSAU 145e’ code applied to them, which can only be completed by a legally certified licence plate vendor. These regulations all work to ensure that number plate modifications still make certain that cars are legally compliant on the road so as not to cause issues for other road users. 

Further to the release of new standards in September 2021, in March 2022, more rules were added. These amendments to number plate production reflect not just legal requirements but also have been designed to ensure that vehicles are roadworthy and safer for longer.

These rules mean that all number plates, including 3D designs, must be:

• Additionally toughened to ensure they can withstand hits and destructive materials that can be found on UK roads.
• Only single in colour as two tones are deemed to cause issues when dealing with different light sources and bad weather. Acrylic and gel lettering is still approved, it just needs to be a single tone to be a legal plate. Show plates can, of course, still have more creative designs.
• Location identifiers, including the address and postcode of the supplier, also need to be included.

gdmoney

But these are 4D not 3D. Are they legal? And what is the fourth dimension? Time?