Official plates in many countries are pressed metal ones, not as cheap to print and squash together unofficially (as they are here) they need a press and the official materials or they would be so easy to spot.
And for the purposes of cloning a photograph and a print on readily available laser/inkjet stock would pass scrutiny from various roadside cameras. A photo realistic image printed on stick on plastic would probably not raise suspicion when viewed from a close distance.
That's true, but would be spotted by a Traffic Warden walking past, or any other traffic official personnel on the walk.
I suspect that any new introduction of "official" plates, anywhere except in the poorer third world countries, would include some fancy technology. Maybe simply something like a RFID tag? Potentially something much more sophisticated.
The only role of a traffic warden is to raise revenue for the local council. They would just ticket the car irrespective of the plate being legal or not.
Despite dire warnings on the "Police Stop" type TV programs few councils will lift the car from the street and have impounded or scrapped.
And what would happen in real life if you car didn't have a tag? I suspect nothing.
On a toll bridge the barrier may not raise and you may be trapped but on a normal road you would just drive past any sensor. The chances of the police stopping you as a result would be virtually nill - they would have too many false alarms to cope with.
It's much like the situation with uninsured drivers - is it a million+ taking the minute risk they they will not be caught?
As ANPR gets better and more widespread, with links to the tax, insurance, and MOT databases any breach is going to be an "easy collar" for police in patrol cars. And our insurance premiums go down. "Can't read the numberplate" should be grounds for stop and check too.
once the new tax disc laws come in, the tax gets cancelled if the insurance runs out, I can see that catching a lot of people that pay their insurance by direct debit, miss a payment, insurance cancelled, tax cancelled and get stopped will be double whammy: insurance and tax.
It's been illegal to have a taxed but uninsured car for three years already.
In one of the Police Programs, a police officer spotted a small difference in the three letter combination between front and rear plates, a middle E on one end became F on the other end. That's quite clever if I may say so. But then again this is for public consumption.
But up to now if you bought a car with tax the tax could remain on it and appear that the car is road legal at least as far as tax goes. I agree that the illegality of no insurance is still the same.
In the distant past I quite often picked up on vehicles with different plates front and rear, much less common now that v5 has to be produced.
My point was that it would be illegal to take to the road with these plates. And breaking a law is a problem for some people.
Providing they meet the regs - standards & manufacturer marking - the end product isn't illegal. Just the supply of them, if the paperwork isn't done.
The plates that obtainable from Ebay meet all the legal requirements as far as the owner of the car is concerned. They have the correct background, colour font style/size and letter spacing - and have a suppliers identification.
There is no legal requirement for a car owner to keep any documentation with regards replacement parts.
I suppose it could have been detected by one of the plates not being consistent with colour and make; automatically detected by ANPR device in the police car. Hence police may nowadays rely more on machinery than on eyeball. Maybe one day we could even have driverless police cars.
if both numbers are referencing a similar vehicle it is unlikely to get picked up on the road, I usually found them at mot time, the reg number is usually taken at the front, the 'wrong' number plate was usually the front, because that is most likely to get damaged, then reg. number and vin do not match.
Probably only possible if there is a legal requirement to keep your number plate 100% perfectly clean at ALL times. It also assumes that plates don't degrade over a period of a few years - the surface could become degraded because of too much cleaning.
The biggest problem with matching the colour is that the front and rear plates are totally different colours in the UK.
The worst offenders here are the plates mounted on some motorbikes to deliberately avoid speed cameras. My guess is that these bikes are immune to being chased by police as the offence doesn't warrent the significant risk.
Buggerit, I just made my own. Laserjet output, trimmed to suit, many coats of laquer to seal it, stuck it ont a white-pained backing board, couple more coats of laquer, drilled a pair of holes and done. If a cop ever spots it, he'll not bother. Remember where I am - hinterlands of bog country.
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