Britain’s roads have been described as a “number-plate wild west”, as one in 15 cars uses ghost number-plates to avoid detection, said The Telegraph.
The illegal plates are being offered by “dodgy sellers” who can set up “with no questions asked”, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety.
Security threat
A ghost number-plate appears completely normal to the human eye but has been modified so it can’t be detected properly by the infrared technology used in automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) and other roadside camera systems.
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Some ghost plates use reflective sprays that create a bright glare when viewed through an ANPR camera, others apply clear coatings designed to blur or warp the letters and numbers. Sometimes, the characters themselves are subtly altered – for example, changing a “B” into an “8” – which bamboozles the recognition software used by the cameras.
The plates are being used by taxi drivers and motorists keen to “avoid detection for speeding penalties, parking fines and low-level criminality”, said The Telegraph. They’re increasingly popular among “grooming gangs, drug traffickers and organised crime groups”.
They could also “pose a security threat”, according to experts, because “would-be terrorists” could use them to “bypass surveillance systems around airports, train stations and iconic buildings”.
Cottage industry
A trading standards team that investigated ghost plates in Rochdale was surprised to discover there were more than 600 suppliers in the city. “We nearly fell off our chairs”, said a spokesperson. “We were finding people making them in the back bedroom, in the shed, in the garden,” they told The Telegraph.
Ghost number-plates, sometimes known as stealth plates, are now as “widespread” as cloned number-plates, where criminals copy a “legitimate” vehicle’s registration on to a stolen car to “hide its identity”, said The Telegraph.
There are 34,455 suppliers in the UK providing registration plates – four times the number of petrol stations. In December, the All-Party Parliamentary Group said it wants the number of licensed sellers “significantly” reduced by bringing in higher standards and a more expansive annual fee. Currently, criminals can “set themselves up as number-plate sellers with no questions asked”, said committee member Sarah Coombes MP.
The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said that the "widespread abuse of number-plates" must be dealt with. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which maintains records of nearly 53 million drivers and more than 47 million vehicles, insisted that a review of number-plate standards is ongoing with the target of banning designs that evade ANPR.
From this month, Transport for London will roll out infra-red cameras to detect illegal number-plates on licensed taxis and private hire vehicles. If licensed drivers are found to have illegal plates on multiple occasions they could lose their licences, said Taxi Point.