number plates

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Tue 22 Jul 2008 15:22
number plates - shadyarea
I have just looked at the survey about number plates,and got me wondering.Does any one know how they will work after 2009.At the moment they have a 0 or 5 to tell the months between march to august,and september to february that the vehicle was registered, then the number of the year but how will this work in 2010 and on.Would the plate in march 2010 be 2 letters 010 then three random letters which would then alter the spacing as it will be 8 characters instead of 7 which it has been for many years?
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 15:25
number plates - Whisky
"010"

Wht would they do that, it will just be 10 or 60 then 11/61, that was the idea behind it, to be in existance for 50 years.

So a plate may be YY10 YYY
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 15:27
number plates - skorpio
By then the Government will have bio-chipped all driver's (from birth!) so we won't need plates. The police will have scanners that will read the chip and of they want to stop a driver, they'll activate a high pitched frequency which only the driver will hear. This will render them incapable of driving ensuring a safe and speedy end to any incident.
The same device will also house a small explosive device if needed.
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 15:43
number plates - Mapmaker
By then there will be no oil, so no cars.
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 16:07
number plates - L'escargot
This AA webpage explains the system. tinyurl.com/6exvcb
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 16:18
number plates - L'escargot
This AA webpage explains the system. tinyurl.com/6exvcb


...... but this system will only work up to 2049, at which point the age identifier will be 99 in the September.
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 16:31
number plates - George Porge
...... but this system will only work up to 2049 at which point the age
identifier will be 99 in the September.


By which time 99.999% of 51 plate will have been scrapped and the system can reuse the numbers again
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 16:43
number plates - daveyjp
Once the current system runs out it will be reversed, just as the previous system was.
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Tue 22 Jul 2008 17:52
number plates - shadyarea
Thanks L'escargot that link is informative
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Wed 23 Jul 2008 03:53
number plates - Bilboman
The current system is the best one yet devised, in that it uses as many letters as possible, including O, I and Z (maximum number of permutations possible) and there is a twice-yearly "snob value" element of buying a new car. The downside is the easy identification of the car's place of registration, which may lead to the regional motoring rivalry once common in France, Italy and Spain (where regional identifiers have all been scrapped.)
To go slightly off topic here, will it be long before yellow rear reflective plates are ditched in favour of white like most of the rest of the world? Yellow stands out especially when driving abroad and it simply does not "go" with other colours (the huge rear yellow "fillet" often seen on Rover 75s sitting square in the middle of a black, red or green rump is hideous).
I was hopping mad when my car was broken into in a street in Spain many years ago - it was parked parallel to dozens of local cars and the yellow plates stood right out and almost invited car thieves to come along. I've recently noticed a lot of French cars travelling through Spain with white and black rear plates, which I presume are illegal modifications. (Not that foreign police can do anything about it, I would have thought.)
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