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Grey reg plates
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14-10-2022 11:24am#1
Some folk in our street have recently fitted grey reg plates to both their cars. Regardless of whether they're legal, just curious as to whether these are meant to serve any practical purpose? (Pic isn't great, but you can see the contrast with the white "IRL".)
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I bought 4D plates too for my car. I used to have similar plates when it was registered in the Netherlands (so up to last month ;) ). They've existed a very long time there (the only alternative is pressed plates - all Dutch plates are metal). One thing I do note, is that the letters and numbers on Dutch plates have the sides at an angle, if that's the correct way to describe it. Whereas the Irish plates have them cut straight. As a result, if looking at the plate from an angle it quickly becomes a big lump of black, whereas with the Dutch plate you don't notice it as much. It helps of course that the Dutch mandatory font is bigger and spaced further apart (only 6 characters excluding hyphens have to fit on the plate, that helps), but even then, they're 4mm high while my Irish plates have 3mm high characters. There was also the option of 5mm for the Irish ones, that's just too much.
The spacing can't really be changed (unless the registration system here is changed to a more sensible system - just baffling that a country with such a small population has the longest registration numbers in Europe), but it would already help to cut the letters and numbers at an angle (which probably means casting them instead of cutting them, so an entirely different production process).
See photo below what I mean about Dutch plates. If somebody wants to see a photo taken at an angle, just let me know.
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They're glued on, and it's a plastic plate, not a metal one. Which is another difference with the Dutch plates, where they're riveted on and as a fail-safe (indeed in case one comes across a bollard or someone elses tow hitch) the plates are pressed (with a thin stroke, so it fits underneath the plastic letters) and inked as well, so the registration is still clear (enough). In the olden days, pre EU plates I think, if for example the bottom half of an X fell off, it was indeed impossible to determin whether it was supposed to be an X or a Y, so they've come up with a solution for that.
For example (the Z has fallen off here). Still needs to be replaced, but in the meantime at least the vehicle isn't driving around with an incorrect registration:
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I design test systems for infrared cameras as party of my job. Speed cameras use Infrared cameras so as not to flash and blind drivers, so the cameras are sensitive to IR too.
Some black plastics (cough 4D plates....) are almost totally transmissive to IR light, and would be very difficult to see with an IR camera. Think of the plastic front of a remote control.
The reverse is a little harder - optically transparent, but blocking IR. But, many semi-transparent films block IR light pretty well. Most of the cameras work around 950nm, so using a window tinting film will reduce their effectiveness big time. Likely to such a point that the ANPR will not work (as it's set to look for black on white)
Couldn't care less what people do to their cars (aside from tinted drive windows) , but reducing the contrast of the numbers against the background immediately leads to them being less readable by cameras and people. The cars are less identifiable as a result, so in a hit and run situation, they are harder to trace.
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