Now this has always confused me!
Found this link, thought some of you may find it helpful too.
Hope this works PU!
tinyurl.com/4d894q
Edited by Tron on 06/04/2008 at 20:05
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Yes, I wonder what will happen in 2050 when they run out of number sfor the current system? Probably by then either:
A. Cars will have been banned by whichever government (not ours) effectively runs the country.
B. We will all have a microchip enbedded in us, which would be used as registration for whichever car, sorry personal mobility solution, we are using at any given time.
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They will do what did they last time and reverse the plate order. It won't be so obvious for year e.g 02 plate is 2002. But they will get another 50 years and most of us will not be here :-(
So for example instead of MZ50 ZZZ you'd get ZZZ 50MZ.
Well that's what I thought will happen. And thinking about it the confusion of 02/52 being both 2002 will move to 52/02 being 2052. So it's probably all thought out by people who will be dead when it's needed.
And you're right we won't have cars as we know it ;-)
Edited by rtj70 on 07/04/2008 at 00:03
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Cars will have been banned by whichever government (not ours) effectively runs the country."
I don't think it can really be said that this country is being run effectively at all!
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Wooohooo !
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"Wooohooo !"
And we'll both be dead before then so why the woohooo? I think I might not lose sleep with license plates having a solution until around 2100. And I'm in my thirties and not driving a roomster :-) But do have an "iTouch".
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I've wanted a key to the latest index marks for some time. Thanks Tron.
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Re: This quote in that web link: "...that would be easier for crash or vehicle related crime witnesses to remember...", I don't know about the rest of you but I find the present plates much harder to remember than the previous A 123 ABC system.
If I was designing a system from scratch I would have them [ slightly longer but easier to remember ] as follows:
First four characters - numbers - month and year, eg 0108 for January this year.
Then a three letter code using the traditional area letters - including restoring the IoW to the traditional "DL" sequences.
And follow that by numbers from 001 to 999 within each sequence.
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I doubt there will be that any new UK regd cars in the UK by 2050. They'll all be from Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Turkey, Moldova or Kurdistan, or which ever countries have just joined the EU.
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I think more realistically, long before 2050 all cars will be fitted with a satellite tracking device for road charging and law enforcement.
The powers that be won't need to read a reg plate with their eyes, the car will broadcast it to all concerned.
If there's an incident and the police want to know which cars were involved, they'll just check the logs to see which cars were around at the time. No need for witnesses to see and remember reg nos.
I'm willing to place bets this will all be in place in less than 20 years time, assuming there is still such a concept as personal transport that we own and run ourselves.
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The thread title sounds like a good special subject for Mastermind.
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Why have regional identifiers at all? So few cars are actually sold, registered, "owned" and driven in the same location these days anyway... And "pinning" car drivers down to so few, large regional areas seems pointless.
Since Spain abolished provincial prefixes, regional rivalry on the roads (occasionally bordering on psycopathic hatred) has all but ceased; Conversely most French regions are now fighting to reverse a change to a new generic registration system, and prefer to maintain regional differences (going back to de Gaulle's comments about trying to govern a country with so many varieties of cheese)
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The only time I've seen local identifiers make any difference was in France - on the spectacular bridge over the Charente at Rochefort, where drivers with the local 17 plate were exempt from the toll (presumably because they were contributing through their taxes anyway.)
Now the bridge is paid for and no-one has to pay the toll. Can anyone imagine that happening in the UK?!
The current UK system is just awful. If I live to see 2050, I hope we can at least have something more elegant in its place, even if a return to the delightfully British eccentric orderliness of the old system is too much to wish for.
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I live near the Manchester and got a new car last October. It's via a lease company and they sourced it in Leicester as all Mazda's they buy come from one dealer. My local mazda dealer is about 2 miles away... so I have plates for the Leicester/Nottingham area (F for Forest) but the car from new resides in Manchester.
My wife's car was sourced via Motorpoint (Burnley) and has a W prefix for West (so from near Bristol)...
.. so regional plates are pointless. They might as well be random letters at the start IMHO. Then we could buy cars in an area with an interesting plate instead of buying out of area.
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"even if a return to the delightfully British eccentric orderliness of the old system is too much to wish for"
But the old system was regionalised too. Anything ending "VR", e.g. M550 JVR, was Manchester. An HR person I knew had one ending BVR and called it her beaver. Did she know what he was saying I wonder - but lets leave it at that before I offend the mod.
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In the days when cars stayed in their registered area, just having a "DL" registration was enough to get you a residents' discount on the Isle of Wight ferries.
But once everyone else cottoned to that, the ferry companies quickly wised up and required proof of address.
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Cars have never had to stay in their registered area in the UK!!
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Yes - maybe I should have been clearer - should have written "tended to stay" shouldn't I?
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They could just switch to the method used in many countries where you have your own personal plate(s)?.....
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