Number Plates News

Snap Happy ANPR Gets Wrong Number

30 April 2009

You may occasionally have read news stories where UK drivers have been issued with parking, speeding or congestion charge penalties because their car number plates have been stolen or “cloned”. Well, we may consider ourselves lucky in at least one respect that we do not live in the USA. In America, the license plate system actually has number cloning built into it! There may be several versions of every number plate: a situation which, not surprisingly, sometimes leads to confusion.

A resident of Lisle, Illinois has received traffic violation notices from New York, even though her car was in its garage at the time of the alleged offence which took place in Buffalo, NY – over 500 miles and a 9 hour drive away!

After a great deal of fuss, and after soliciting assistance from a newspaper’s “Problem Solver” column, Marie Lai eventually found out that the erroneous penalty notices had been generated by another vehicle bearing the same number.

Ernie Dannenberger, director of the vehicle services department in the Illinois secretary of state's office, told media that there should not really have been any scope for confusion. While it is possible for commercial vehicles and domestic passenger vehicles to have same license plate numbers, commercial vehicles have a slightly smaller letter at the end of the plate character string.

In fact, it is actually possible for one vehicle registration number to be shared by 69 different plates. These variations are possible because the state allows various custom or “specialty” plates to be issued. These variations include 18 college plates, 18 military plates and 33 other private plate versions promoting various groups and causes. Supposedly the number plates are distinguished from one another by a two-letter code, smaller than the main characters, which is stacked to the right of the main registration ID number.

Clearly, the number plates systems and the ANPR number recognition systems used by Illinois and New York do not work well together as things stand. Goodness knows how much additional confusion could arise if stolen and cloned plates enter the picture.