DART PCN

Green_hopeful

I hope this is ok on this board. 

A family member has received a PCN for the DART crossing in April 2024. She lives near Manchester and clearly didn’t use the Dartford crossing on that date. The photos are absolutely dreadful but you can see that the car photographed has different shaped headlights to her car. I have appealed to the DART people. We assume someone is using her registration number falsely. 

We have tried to notify her local police because clearly the offence has no specific location but it seems the want us to notify the police local to the DART crossing. We will carry on with the Manchester Police just in case they will help. 

Does anyone know which police force we should contact as local to the Dartford Tunnel? Not sure if the Essex side or Kent side would be better. 

I notice that there are quite a few older threads about notifying the DVLA and getting them to take it seriously. Is there any update on how to do this effectively? 

Will see if we can get a couple of stickers for her car going forward but any other advice on car cloning. 

Also why is there no proper management of this situation. Surely the victims of this issue should be protected not have things made more difficult. 

Keep_pedalling

It could be a simple misread of the number plate rather than a clone, can you actually see the plate in the pictures provided? 

fisherjim

ANPR uses OCR technology, even the best calibrated authorised devices are only up to 95% accurate, weather, light, reflection, angle, dirt, leaves, etc etc can make them miss-read and even then computer enhancement is used to read the image, plate cloning is possible but less likely.

This would be better taken over to ftla.uk they are the experts on proper fines we major on private parking tickets here

Green_hopeful

Thanks both. The black and white photo is the only one we have got. Would be lucky to see anything from that. When I appealed I said either the plate has been misread or the car registration has been cloned. Will try ftla.

Johnersh

1. ANPR can misread, as per my favourite example:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/motorist-fined-number-plate-t-shirt 

2. Cloning is possible. Do a (free) GDPR request to get *all* the images they have.

3. Check whether you can prove the car was elsewhere & supply that evidence.

4. FWIW, given the curvature of the bonnet and lights, that looks more like a 2018 Aygo than a KIA.

Fruitcake

The headlights look different. In the B & W photo, they are teardrop shaped with the headlight outboard in the fatter part, and sidelights inboard in the narrow part, whereas the headlights in the colour image are inboard in the fatter part.

As above, this suggests they are completely different cars.

Green_hopeful

I was reading on another website and they had a very similar photo on their PCN. Theirs was a ford focus  

Johnersh

It's the shape of the bonnet too that makes me think this is an Aygo.