Anyone seen any good number plates on cars lately?

[MOCAŠ]

I see that car a lot around Mayfair, surprised it hasn't been stopped given the amount of police around the area.

Yes, it's been around for ages. I too am surprised he's got away with it for so long. Perhaps it belongs to ACPO...

 

[MOCAŠ]

 

[gina2201]

BDS 1 on a L322 Range Rover (the car is up for sale but when enquired - funnily enough the plate is not for sale with the car!)

 

[MOCAŠ]

BDS 1 on a L322 Range Rover (the car is up for sale but when enquired - funnily enough the plate is not for sale with the car!)

Are you sure it wasn't 1 BDS (or something else)? BDS 1 is assigned to the High Commission of Barbados in London:

 

[Deleted member 6183]

Saw a black Jag this week with DYJ and some numbers, Catherine Zeta Jones behind the wheel.

 

[ringway]

Wilmslow, earlier today.

 

[artyman]

Whilst on holiday saw a Range Rover with P10LCE, had to do a double take!

 

[MOCAŠ]

 

[MOCAŠ]

 

[MOCAŠ]

Just checked: this one is actually 10 FF.

Went for £3000 in 1994. The real 1 OFF (which is on an MX-5) went for £26,000 at the first DVLA sale in 1989.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Edgware Road, today:

27 WT seen in the BBC's Twenty Twelve last week:

 

[MOCAŠ]

 

[ringway]

Just checked: this one is actually 10 FF.

Went for £3000 in 1994. The real 1 OFF (which is on an MX-5) went for £26,000 at the first DVLA sale in 1989.

These double number plates and the ambiguity they undoubtedly cause, present a real problem, which could only be solved by the withdrawl of one of the plates.
I suppose the latterly released plates would have to be the victims.

 

[MOCAŠ]

These double number plates and the ambiguity they undoubtedly cause, present a real problem, which could only be solved by the withdrawl of one of the plates.
I suppose the latterly released plates would have to be the victims.

Hmm, I'm not convined that's the solution. The main ambiguity relates to the characters O/0 and I/1, but it's also quite easy to confuse B/8 and, to a lesser extent, S/5. Actually, in the early days, Scotland withheld the combinations SC, SF, SG, CS, FS and GS, over fears that the letter C might be mistaken for G, and F for E. Take out all the potential "duplicates", though, and you severely limit the number of combinations available.

Also, it just happens in this case that neither 1 OFF nor 10 FF was in circulation at the time the DVLA sales were introduced, so they were able to choose which to release first. Under the normal sequence of events, 10 FF would have been issued first, so the temptation to misspace it would still have been there. I appreciate you're saying it wouldn't matter so much if there wasn't also a 1 OFF, but it would still potentially cause confusion if reported following an accident, requiring someone to decipher it establish what it really was.

One solution would be to follow the example set by many other countries, and use different characters for O/0 and I/1. When the current Charles Wright font was introduced in 2001, they solved the abiguity surrounding D/0 and B/8 by adding small but effective serifs to the letters. This could also have been done for I/1, but wasn't. O/0 presents more of a problem, and one of the tenets of the font is that all characters (other than I/1) should be of a fixed width; however, the could have gone with the German solution (shown below) or they could have adopted the Irish convention of having a separation character (eg: "-") between letters and numbers, with I and O not used at all.

However, I think the real solution lies with enforcing the display regualtions rigorously, with serious penalties for abuse, giving no quarter to those who claim that spacing or charcter manipulation don't matter. Most other countries seem to manage this - I'm not aware of any culture of casually misrepresenting numberplates in Germany, or the US, for instance. It won't solve the problem completely, though; for instance, I did a double-take when I saw the car below, as I initially thought is was anachronously wearing PB59 LRD.

Interestingly, the debate about how numberplates should be spaced has raged ever since they were first introduced in 1904. Back then, the convention was to have a dot or dash between the letters and numbers when they were on the same line, as can be seen in the 1903 Dunhill advert below:

However, the first owner of A 1, the 2nd Earl Russell, chose to display his cherished number without anything separating the letter and number, sparking some consternation in the pages of contemporary motoring journal, The Car. They kicked it off by publishing a photo of his car in their edition of 13 January 1904, observing: "We are surprised to note that the number-plate of so astute a person as Earl Russell should not be en règle. It will be seen that the dash which should appear between the index letter and the figure of a horizontal plate is missing on Earl Russell's car."

The following week's edition carried a response from none other than Earl Russell himself:

Sir - Referring to the photograph of my car, your critic is mistaken in saying that my number-plate is not en règle. I have only been "astute" enough to read the regulations, and I do not anywhere find that the dash between the letter and the figure is prescribed. To insert this dash would be to put upon the plate something contrary to the regulations.

The Car wasn't going to let it lie, though:

According to the defence urged by Earl Russell on behlaf of the form of number-plate which he adopted, the omission of the hyphen between the letter A and the figure 1 was intentional on his part. He contends, in short, that it is the hyphen and not its absence that is illegal. It is perfectly true that the Local Government Board regualtions did not specifically define, in so many words, that the hyphen shall be used in the case of horizontal number-plates: but, as everyone knows by now, the hyphen is clearly marked in the illustrations printed with the Order, and it is further stated that "the mark and number must be arranged in conformity with the arrangements of figures and issued in one or other of the alternative diagrams.

The following week, Russell was back, pointing out with pedantic perfection that as the hyphen was neither a letter nor a number, its presence could not be dictated by a regulation that referred to the arrangement of those elements.

The Car was left licking its wounds, but tried valiantly to argue that the word "figure", as used in the regulations, did not necessarily refer solely to numerals. They bemoaned how unscrupulous motorists were demonstrating "a desire to take advantage of a lack of definition" in the regulations, and went out on a limb by citing how "in Ireland, the absence of a hyphen after the letter 'I' would cause obvious confusion, in which a car numbered 'AI-15' would be read as 'AI15' if the hyphen were deleted. Action of this kind would only result in the imposition of more stringent restrictions."

By 1905, the debate had moved on to the size and spacing of the characters themselves:

Hardly a day passes but that we see cars with number-plates that are in no sense in conformity with official requirements. The numbers are of the wrong size, and are not separated by the correct distances from each other or the distinguishing letter which preceeds them. In some cases, of course, the variations are trivial, but not universally so by any means. And where is the excuse? At the time the new regualtions were promulgated they were printed in every automobile journal, hence excuse there is none. There are other regulations which are ignored, and we only refrain from specifying these because the police in certain districts are but too ready to seize upon every technical breach, and carry the enforcement of the letter of the law to the degree of undiscriminatory persecution.

Ah, plus ça change...

 

[MOCAŠ]

 

[MOCAŠ]

or they could have adopted the Irish convention of having a separation character (eg: "-") between letters and numbers, with I and O not used at all.

Correction: "O" is used in the area codes for counties Mayo (MO), Offaly (OF) and Sligo (SO), but the letters are always separated from the preceding and following numbers by a hyphen on either side.

 

[Charles Morgan]

Noticed it again on an expensive Lambo and thought it a most appropriate plate for a likely future owner.

There is a Countach in the Lambo showroom on the Old Brompton Road at pres if anyone wishes to see one in the flesh.

 

[MOCAŠ]

 

[PXW]

Saw a silver merc (sorry, didn't get the model) on the A303 yesterday sporting D111GAF...made me smile, and I guess DVLA haven't heard the song....

 

[Ian_Mac]

Spotted this Prowler whilst on a day out in Weymouth on Saturday.

No doubt something to do with the English Volley Ball tour taking place on the beach. The car itself though was just in a public car park at the ferry port.