Detecting fake licence plates

CathJ

CathJ

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This sounds dubious to me...

Joburg metro police have caught a 38-year-old woman who received 63 speeding fines to the value of R23 000 in just eight months.

On Wednesday the driver of a silver grey Ford Fiesta was travelling along Main Reef Road unaware that metro police officers - with new technology that tracks down vehicles using false number plates - were in the vicinity.
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How on earth can they detect that you're using fake plates?!

Link
 
Maybe comparing the color of the car to the one given on the original registration papers?

Or something like that?

"Whenever we looked in the system, the picture was not corresponding with the registration number. We were unable to issue the fines because the camera was showing us a picture of a Ford Fiesta, not a Ford Bantam," Mamonyane said.

She said they were aware that many motorists were using false numbers plates.

"We already have technology in place that will deal with false number plates. We can pick up the car easily on the new system. We are going to catch the culprits," she said.

Mamonyane said the woman had printed a fraudulent number plate last year after she had received two speeding fines on her legitimate registration number.
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Good to hear that.

I've received three or four false speeding fines, due to some bugger using my numberplate to avoid speeding fines.
 
Maybe they have a program which scans the numberplates of vehicles, and alerts them to outstanding fines, after which they pull the vehicle in question off, and they then check the vehicle's papers. If it doesn't match, then they query it further.

I think it is this possibility.
 
The_Librarian said:
Maybe comparing the color of the car to the one given on the original registration papers?
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Well, they could see from the photos that the car was a different model and colour to the one associated with that number plate.

The question is, how did they know it was that silver fiesta?

But yeah, good that they caught her and lets hope they catch more of them.

(I first saw this story on the Star's hoardings on the way in to work this morning. The headline was Woman driver bust for 63 fines. So, if it had be a male, would the headline have read Man driver bust for 63 fines?:D)

Edit; Ah TL, you're probably right about how they got her.
 
well pretty simple i would imagine

they put in your plate, the details would come up

white citi golf 1.4! your driving a ford fiesta silver

dam its all over

also surely your license would not match your plates either?
 
killadoob said:
well pretty simple i would imagine

they put in your plate, the details would come up

white citi golf 1.4! your driving a ford fiesta silver

dam its all over

also surely your license would not match your plates either?
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Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I wasn't thinking of them being connected to the licence database while on the road.

chiskop said:
(I first saw this story on the Star's hoardings on the way in to work this morning. The headline was Woman driver bust for 63 fines. So, if it had be a male, would the headline have read Man driver bust for 63 fines?:D)
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That always irritates. When will people learn that using 'female' as an adjective is fine? It's only when you use it as a noun that it becomes offensive.
 
CathJ said:
That always irritates. When will people learn that using 'female' as an adjective is fine? It's only when you use it as a noun that it becomes offensive.
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What assumed me was the fact that her gender was important enough to be reflected in the headline - they wouldn't have done that for a man. :rolleyes:
 
I have seen this type of road block. They make you drive over a bump and the have a special camera.

The simple solution was that they flagged her licence plate because of all the outstanding fines. When they checked the plates they saw that the car should be a bantam AND that all the fines were for a car matching her car.
 
AFAIK, they use the cameras next to the road. They even removed one speed trap in Centurion, IMO, to test using only the roadside camera.
 
They use a scanner that picks up the license plate. then the scanner uses some sort of recognition software and checks the license plate against a database. If it detects that there are any outstanding fines, it alerts the metro police officer who then pulls the car over.

The police officer probably saw that the license plat in question had a discrepancy to the car itself. and/or there was a red flag on the database for that registration number
 
Alchemist said:
They use a scanner that picks up the license plate. then the scanner uses some sort of recognition software and checks the license plate against a database. If it detects that there are any outstanding fines, it alerts the metro police officer who then pulls the car over.
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+1

There was a lengthy report on this technology in one of the local rags sometime last year. Fingerprinting is also being used ad-hoc now as they have mobile fingerprint scanners that can access a DB with any details they may find interesting.
 
Whatever - but I really do hope that they catch all those silly buggers who use other people's number plates to get away with speeding...
 
google for ANPR, this is the system used in the UK and most probably exported to South Africa.
Sorry guys
 
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