Can anyone answer why I keep seeing more and more of these style of plates?
I thought white letters on black plates were illegal on cars over a certain age or have the rules changed.
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My neighbour has recently been pulled by the Police and fined £30 and ordered to comply with regulations for this (Silver on Black on a 55 plate)
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Can anyone answer why I keep seeing more and more of these style of plates?
IMO It is because more and more individuals think it looks "cool" especially on black cars and more and more are prepared to risk having the plates replaced with another number as the DVLA own the plate ( not the "cool" individual) :-(
>>I thought white letters on black plates were illegal on cars over a certain age or have the rules changed.
>>
You are correct and the rules have not changed.
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The vehicle must have been made before 1.1.1973 for white on black plates to be legal.
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Can anyone answer why I keep seeing more and more of these style of plates?
Because of a blatant disregard for the law.
Illegally spaced and represented registrations are at epidemic proportions.
It should be a £1000 fine, 3 points and confiscation of the reg.
That would put a stop to it. Unfortunately, the authorities don't seem overly interested, and so the cycle of disrespect for the law begins...
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How very true.
I have been in correspondence with Northumbria police for 4 months re illegal spacings etc and have been advised I need photos and measurements of offending plates before they will take action.
Difficult when car is going in opposite direction on a motorway.
I have provided some 60+ extreme examples
police have said they will write to offending motorists asking them to change plates!!!!????
Can the registered not get a HORT/1 to produce car at station with legal plates.
No apparently it is not a crime merely an offence.
Pedantic rationale I suppose.
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I am surprised that a partial solution has not been introduced. :-)
There are lots of guys in uniform and with a camera in hand wandering around taking a big interest in vehicles.
IMO a bonus system for them would soon divert them from their current task :-)
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Got a friend who couldn't prosecute because the plate on the offender was unreadable.
Contacted his MP who in turn got in touch with someone from the DoT who said something along the lines of how seriously they take it.
Obviously not.
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But they have the time, inclination and manpower to send uniformed officers to a school nativity play to prevent parents taking photographs of their own childen! We don't need new intiatives and laws - just the sensible and rigorous enforcement of powers that already exist. Hooky numberplates would be an excellent starter and the confiscation of a £10,000 plate by DVLA would concentrate people's minds enormously!
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Only in the UK would people care about such an administrative regulation, more than the rest of heinous crime which is out of control.
Please reply in blue ink only!
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Only in the UK would people care about such an administrative regulation more than the rest of heinous crime which is out of control.
One of the problms being that serious crime already takes advantage of the lax policing of these administrative regulations.
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RE: "Only in the UK would people care about such an administrative regulation"
It's a safety issue - white/yellow reflective plates show up better at night, particularly when the car's parked and the lights are off.
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A safety issue? You jest. You mean that people might not see a car if it has white lettering on black plates? Why might the pre-1973 car be visible?
I can see why there are rules for what kind of number plates we ought to have, otherwise we could have people who fancy gothic red script on turquoise plates, but in the end of the day, it's not a big issue, and the police do have better things to do.
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and the police do have better things to do.
Like trying to trace a car in a hit and run with unreadable plates?
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Agreed - they do have better things to do - but they don't do them! See thread on this forum re police reposnse to a house break in and stolen car. Too many people tied up for too long to investigate one crime.
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 11/06/2008 at 13:54
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>>A safety issue? You jest. You mean that people might not see a car if it has white lettering on black plates?
>>
In ye old days cars needed parking lights. Add on parking lights were available that consisted of a unit that clipped on the top of the drivers window, showed white light front and red to the rear and plugged into the electrics.
IIRC refective plates were introduced to restore some of this visibilty.
It may seem odd in the present era of decent head lights etc.
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They use the black/white numbers and weird font sizes to try to avoid detection by the various cameras. I've seen many a car without a front number place, usually old Cosworths or bangers, so the SPECS Speed Cameras don't catch um, utter morons !
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 13/06/2008 at 01:47
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I have been in correspondence with Northumbria police for 4 months re illegal spacings
er.....don't you have anything better to do in your life? Funny how this forum features (on the one hand) people trying to get out of fines or bellyaching about them, and (on the other), people trying to "bubble" people up for really minor matters. I'd hate to live next door to you matey.
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It has been shown that if you police the minor offences well (relatively easy) it reduces the major offences as there is a greater feeling that you will be caught.
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Is the correctness of the number plate part of the MOT? Just wondering really. While I'm at it, anyone know why we have white at the front and yellow at the back?
I don't have a problem really with much plate-wise, as long as it doesn't detract from readability. I happen to think that the old black & silver do look a bit smarter than the standard, but that's me. I think it's quite sad that people use different fonts and bolt locations to try to spell their names, but again that's up to them.
I do remember sort of fondly the craze in the late 80's for motorbikes to have REALLY small number plates- found it quite funny! Friends who'd done it regularly got busted. I remember one guy with a GSX-R 750 who had a plate that was literally as small as a credit card. Also heard about a guy who had fitted a motor to his plate that flipped it up so as not to be visible to plod... although that could be apocryphal.
BW,
Alex.
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Also heard about a guy who had fitted a motor to his plate that flipped it up so as not to be visible to plod... although that could be apocryphal.
That was James Bond wasn't it?
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>>.. anyone know why we have white at the front and yellow at the back?
>>
IIRC cars used to be parked on the left with the passenger door adjacent to the kerb ( RHD of course). It was either the law or convention but was the norm.
I believe the idea of white/yellow plataes was that you could more easily identify what other vehicles were up to.
When on my first drive in South Africa I was soon informed by a helpful local that I should park passenger door to the kerb or else I was likely to get fined.
It seems a good idea. Do other countries have the same rule?
Some replies fron Yahoo
"IIRC the reason for a yellow plate at the rear but white at the front was that it is illegal to show a white light to the rear at night, and that this law includes reflectors in its definition of what constitutes a light. This was before the days of reversing lights, for which the law was amended so that if you are reversing you can show a white light in conjunction with a red light..
Also Yellow & Black are the boldest contrast you can get and thus enables them to be read at the greatest distance."
"...it's all down to the reflection.You would get so much glare if you followed a car with white plates on the back."
"Ideally we'd have had white both front and rear, but it is illegal to show white to the rear (including reflectors) apart from reversing lamps. So they settled on yellow, being the next best colour for visibility"
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Funny how this forum features (on the one hand) people trying to get out of fines or bellyaching about them and (on the other) people trying to "bubble" people up for really minor matters. I'd hate to live next door to you matey.
Maybe there's good reason to moan about a speeding or parking ticket when it could easily be given in error or you were a fraction over the limit or parked for two minutes longer than you should have been.
Misrepresenting a number plate is a deliberate act.
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Funny how if you travel around Europe you realise this is the only country where people feel the need to "express" themselves through non-standard plates.
On most journeys I see:
Wrong fonts
Wrong spacing
Wrong size
Wrong emblems where the "EuroGB" should be
I saw one of the many police progs the other night where they stopped a chav girl, whose plate broke all of those rules, and her response was that she though they should be OK as " they was a present" (!).They told her to go to Halfords ( she thought they said Harrods) to get new plates.
I guess this is in the same category as the increasing number of towbars/cycle racks/trailers which you see obscuring plates, where people have figured the chances of a "pull" are less than being caught by a camera, and even then it's probably a warning and in any event not points.
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I have never understood what all the fuss is about here. A distinctively illegal number plate is just as easy to spot as a bog standard one, easier in fact. If the authorities gave much of a damn they would enforce the law more positively. And if they don't care, why does anyone else?
Is it perhaps a dark variant of trainspotting?
Edited by Lud on 13/06/2008 at 15:57
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Umm some anal comments here on the lines of the betterdriver.co.uk website. What difference does it make in the scheme of things. ANPR can cope with all manner of plates apparently, excepting some of the more extreme italic style scripts. The Porsche has a sort of personalised plate & also has the Porsche logo on the side & "TiPEC The Independant Porsche Enthusiasts Club" at the bottom. The font, spacing etc. is perfectly legal. Is it anything to get worked up, no of course not. The car is pre-2001 so it's not subject to the full rules anyway.
If some of the people complaining cared more about their own standards of driving & ensuring all of their lights worked all of the time then I'd be more impressed.
Edited by tr7v8 on 13/06/2008 at 23:51
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Haha, a very entertaining thread.
How some people have time to report other motorist number plates is beyond me.
get a life.
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Maybe the posters who think it's no big deal can come back and tell us how they feel after they or their family are involved in an accident with a car that can't be identified because someone "innocently" tampered with their plates.
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Maybe the posters who think it's no big deal can come back and tell us how they feel after they or their family are involved in an accident with a car that can't be identified because someone "innocently" tampered with their plates.
This is a common comment tripped out by the anal & the police as regards this.
Strange how we can all remember the defaced ones, but can't remember the one we followed all the way into work this morning?
It is just an example of over enforcement of the trivia, whilst ignoring the wider issues.
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This is a common comment tripped out by the anal & the police as regards this.
I'll mention that to the lady who I work with who walks with a stick (Chav Plate unreadable and offender never traced), and one of our contractors who was out for nearly a year with a crushed pelvis (unreadable plate only traced by police after being pulled for something else).
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I certainly do have better things to do and so do but as was proven in New York Zero tolerance works and if people make a CONSCIOUS decision to break the law then in my eyes they are far worse than people who may accidentally transgress some arbitary laws like bus lane laws when they are not actually holding up a bus by clipping the edge of a white line on a Sunday morning at 6.00am.
However each to their own.
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I can understand why unreadable plates are illegal, but if white on black plates are illegal for whatever reason then why aren't pre 73 cars made to wear white and yellow plates if there is any kind of safety issue? Cars that didn't come with reflectors or rear fog lamps or reversing lights are required to have them added on for the mot, so surely if there were any safety issues associated with black plates then pre 73 cars would have to change to white and yellow.
And anyone who drives down the motorway and is more concerned with the colour of the number plates of the traffic going in the opposite direction is more of a danger to other drivers than the guy with the black plates going the other way.
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Cars that didn't come with reflectors or rear fog lamps or reversing lights are required to have them added on for the mot, so surely if there were any safety issues associated with black plates then pre 73 cars would have to change to white and yellow.
No - www.motuk.co.uk
This inspection applies to the one rear fog lamp which is required to be fitted to the centre or offside of vehicles first used on or after 1 April 1980.
Rear reflectors are not required to be fitted to vehicles used only during the hours of daylight, which are fitted with neither front nor rear position lamps, etc. (See 1.1.A)
Reversing lights have never been required.
Edited by martint123 on 03/03/2011 at 18:28
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Hi,
The DVLA dosen't want to appear too dogmatic with the wrongly spaced/lettered/coloured. plates as it's anice little earner for them.
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I can understand why unreadable plates are illegal, but if white on black plates are illegal for whatever reason then why aren't pre 73 cars made to wear white and yellow plates if there is any kind of safety issue?
It's all to do with not having retrospective legislation.
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If you have to use unusual spellings to get around the filter then odds are the words aren't allowed.
Edited by BorisTheSpider on 08/03/2011 at 17:56
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