Number Plates News

Big Brother is Watching Your Number Plates

22nd July 2008

Regular Numberplates.com visitors will know that we discourage our members from displaying illegal number plates. Mis-spaced characters, decorative fonts, patterned backgrounds, cartoon images and football emblems are all possible sources of unwelcome attention from the authorities.

One of the reasons that the regulations are so specific about what is allowed is that number plate recognition systems are being used more and more often to aid the police and other agencies in law enforcement and crime detection.

The speed camera is one of the simplest, and probably the best known, of these systems. Cheeky drivers have found various ways to combat them: sat-nav camera maps, special sprays to render number plates unreadable by the cameras… The low-tech approach has always been a hasty foot applied to the brake just before one passes the camera.

These days that may not work. A camera system called SPECS has, for some time, been rolled out across various parts of the UK. These speed cameras work out a vehicle's average speed by calculating the time it takes to drive between two camera positions, so the old foot-on-the-brake trick just won't cut it any more. Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson is a famous opponent of the system. They are much harder to fool than traditional speed cameras, and the ANPR number plate reading technology built into the system means that your nice clear, legal number plates will give you away if you happen to make more haste than the speed limit allows.

We still have to advise that regulation number plates are the wisest choice, but as they are so photogenic we also have to make sure you are aware of these new cameras.

Drive carefully, and don’t get nicked.