The Department for Transport has made a key update after growing concern about drivers using ‘simple’ methods to make cars look invisible to speed cameras. The increasing use of ‘ghost’ number plates to outfox automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras has led to increased calls for tough action.
The British Number Plate Manufacturers Association (BNMA), which represents companies producing the vast majority of plates in the UK, wants tougher regulation of the sector. In a letter to the Government, it claimed that a number of suppliers that have not registered with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) are not following its requirements.
Drivers can buy them for as little as £30 online, and they face a fine of £100 if they are caught using them on the roads, with no penalty points. The plates have left police baffled, according to MP Sarah Coombes who said they look “normal” to the human eye but have a “reflective coating on them, or they’ve been interfered with in some way, which makes them unreadable to infrared police speed cameras on our roads”.
In a new parliamentary written questions Labour’s Jim McMahon, asked Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander: “What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of ghost number plate enforcement in England.”
In reply Lilian Greenwood Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) today (December 8) said that an announcement would be made in the next few weeks with the publication of a major policy document. She said: “The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and other government departments to improve the identification and enforcement of number plate crime, including the use of cloned and “ghost” number plates. It is already illegal to use a vehicle displaying cloned or “ghost” number plates.
“The enforcement of road traffic law and how available resources are deployed is the responsibility of individual Chief Officers and Police and Crime Commissioners, taking into account the specific local problems and demands with which they are faced. The Police are operationally independent and they will investigate each case according to its individual merits.
“This Government takes road safety seriously. We are committed to reducing the numbers of those killed and injured on our roads. We are considering a range of policies under the new Road Safety Strategy; the first for ten years. This includes the case for changing the motoring offences. We are considering concerns raised by campaigns, Parliamentarians and bereaved families that Ministers have met. The Government intends to publish the Road Safety Strategy by the end of the year.”
A previous head of the UK’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition system technology has said that about one in every fifteen motorists was circumventing the system in a manner he cited as ‘staggeringly simple. Professor Fraser Sampson, upon exiting his role as Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, penned a letter to the then Transport Secretary lamenting the lack of action being taken to curb this issue.
Professor Sampson revealed that criminals are evading fines by cloning number plates, using reflective tape, and purchasing ‘stealth plates’, allowing them to speed or sneak into low-emission zones undetected. He shared that despite technology being advanced, there is still only a 97% accuracy with number plate recognition – leading to approximately 2.4 million misreadings daily, which could result in faultless drivers being mistakenly ticketed.
Professor Sampson further elaborated on the scale of surveillance, mentioning that around 15,400 traffic lanes monitored by cameras create between 75 and 80 million number plate reads daily and sometimes exceeding 80 million, with predictions this could surge to 100 million reads every day by the conclusion of 2024.
Prof Sampson has highlighted a significant flaw in the ANPR system, despite its technological advancements and operational indispensability. He pointed out that the system’s reliance on physical number plates creates a vulnerability: “For all its technological advancement and operational indispensability, the ANPR system still relies ultimately on a piece of plastic affixed to either end of a vehicle. Served by a wholly unregulated market, what my predecessor termed the humble number plate represents a single and readily assailable point of failure with the ANPR network being easily defeated by the manufacture and sale of stealth plates, cloned registration marks and other rudimentary obscurant tactics.”
He further explained the simplicity of evading the system: “The result is that the ability to frustrate the ANPR system remains staggeringly simple at a time when proper reliance on it for key public services such as policing, law enforcement and traffic management is increasing daily. Emission zones and other strategic traffic enforcement schemes put motorists in situations where they have to make significant financial choices and it is at least arguable that the incentives for some to ‘game’ the ANPR systems have never been greater.”
Prof Sampson also mentioned how easy it is to obtain means to deceive the technology: “Merely by applying reflective tape to distort part of a registration plate or purchasing stealth plates from online vendors, motorists can confuse and confound current number plate recognition technology and both of these are easily obtainable. One recent estimate suggested that one in fifteen drivers may already be using anti-ANPR technology; it is reasonable to expect this conduct to increase as the reliance on ANPR for new traffic management schemes continues.”