American Reacts to Why European Number Plates are BETTER
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- čas přidán 19. 11. 2023
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Odd that there was no mention that in Europe you must have plates front and back. It always seems weird to me to see a car with no front plate.
Most cars also look bit weird without a front plate, but at the same time, US front plates may block coolant more compared to the slimmer and wider European plates.
Many European cars usually designed to have a front plate, as many American cars usually don't have a specific spot for a front plate.
Some countries including Russia( that has nearly the same plate desighn) have cameras that use different view point so both front and rear are necessary
@@automation7295 make the front plate mandatory, and the design will follow, a spot for the plate will be included
Moste without front plate is just so they can try to not get Identified by speed cameras
@@automation7295 the blocking of coolant systems is negligible. Manufacturers account for this stuff, so unless you're trying to fully min-max your efficiency above 99% there is no difference.
Digital plates defeat the purpose of a number plate: to have an identifying code permanently fixed to each car. Theoretically they could even be changed while driving.
This is absolutely true, and even if, say, there might be some security features, you can stil certainly bypass them much easier. And yes, they are much less resilient than standard ones. Sounds like a very bad idea to me, and unfortunately very fitting for our time, just throw money and 'digitalization' at everything.
Yes, a solution to a problem that does not exist, just like electric handbrakes. Just more to go wrong that the average Joe cannot fix.
Like they said in the clip, if it's digital it's hackable... Want 007 style swapping plates?
And you could power it off making writing tickets harder, and anything else you need the plates for (assuming it doesn't have a back up battery build in)
I also have a question about when a traffic cam wants to make a picture, because that screen looked quite reflective and we all know screens need to be looked at from the right angle, especially in sunlight...
BTW NL has NO vanity plates, you can buy a novelty plate at a fair for example but it's not legally registered (only displaying behind a window is allowed, you still need the official plates on your front and rear bumper)
NL also has rules about certain letter combinations (as the format has changed over the years it can be something like any plate spelling: NA-ZI, NSB* or curse words for example
*= Those plates aren't allowed as they refer to a dark period during the WW's etc.
@@russcattell955i EXACTLY !!!! Trying to make everything un-fixable by the owner (unless the owner has specialized tools/workshop).
Plus adding many other points of failure on an item that didn't need to be "improved".
@@Wrecker3D or just after an accident.
a normal license plate stays (mostly) intact after an accident.
a digital one will break down, and now no one knows which license plate goes with that wreck.
makes the job of identifying the car and the people in it unnecessarily difficult.
Here in Europe the design of the license plates and the font chosen is to make automatic number recognition easier, which is important for using toll roads and, well, traffic violations (like pollution restrictions)...
It also makes shenanigans like using sharpy to turn an R into a B very difficult because of the specific letter shapes.
Not really the UK plate is basically the same as they where 40 years ago
@@jonathanbuzzard1376 ... UK plates today are nothing like they were 40 years ago.
@@martinwebb1681Other than the change of the letter sequencing because they ran out of letters, the font is the same, and they are white at the front and yellow at the back. So yes they are basically the same in my view.
@@jonathanbuzzard1376 ... It's a totally different registration plate system from that of 40 years ago, and the plates are now non reflective and the numbers and letters are of a different size than 40 years ago.
In Europe, readable license plates allowed the development of license plate recognition systems. These systems make it easier for us, for example, to pay for highways, automatically pay for parking, etc.
Or speed cameras
true :(@@E85stattElektro
The blue bar on the left side of all EU-countries (and many non-EU countries with their own design instead of the stars) started appearing in the 90's. Before then, if you ventured outside your own country, you needed to have the oval sticker with the country code of your car's registration in addition to the plate.
Many relics still roam the roads of eastern Europe with CH, DE, AUT stickers on the back :D
@@a.n.6374 oh yes! I live in Bulgaria (but am from Germany). Car-wise, I sometimes think I'm still in my 20's. So many Opel Astra F's, Golf III's, some BMW E30's etc. still around.
Here in the UK we have to have the oval again since brexit.
It used to be GB but then our stupid politicians changed it to UK
@@dasy2k1 Yes, the blue part (EU stars and country code) of the plates is only a valid replacement in the EU for the nationality plate inside the EU. If you drive your car in 3rd countries, you also need to have the international oval white nationality plate, which oftentimes is just an additional sticker at the rear of your car.
Since Brexit you need to have those again if you want to visit EU countries. We also need them if we like to visit non-EU countries. Most car owners didn't use the nationality plates despite they were in active use (mandatory), because they didn't plan to exit EU territory.
Just another 'small' reason on top, why I had no more contact with your country since Brexit. 😔
For the same reason I have no passport. As long as I do not plan to leave the EU the ID card is all I need.
As long as I do not plan to leave the Euro zone, I don't have to bother with exchanging currencies. Perhaps your mobile service provider charges you with additional roaming fees again. No visa or work permit necessary inside EU. No customs documentary, I don't buy or sell items online (e-commerce) in/to the UK anymore...
On top, the numerous other differences... left-hand traffic, other units.
Afaik, GB is England, Scotland and Wales and UK is GB plus Northern Ireland. Did you have a separate nationality plate for Northern Ireland in times of the GB nationality plate back then?
You still can get such stickers
To me a license plate is a sign of identification, just like a passport is. Therefore l appreciate a clean and standardised design with minimal or no bling. A month ago l damaged my plate and ordered a new one. It cost me 6 USD with the shipment to my house. That's in Sweden. It varies a lot by country. In Bulgaria for instance, it has to be mounted by the police
I have seen 1 case of a digital plate in Europe, it was some dude with a moped that had a tablet strapped to the back and was just scrolling through a list of fake plates from different countries trying to decide which fake plate he'd run that day
In Hungary you don't need a plate on a moped.
Whether you need one is country dependent yeah, just like age, helmets etc they can vary from country to country
Haha wow that’s funny 😆
The purpose of a plate is to identify the car and the owner. There is never a duplicate plate. Our plates here in Greece have the blue ribbon with the European Flag and the GR letters below the , that indicate the country. On the white portion of the plate there are three letters that show the municipality they have been issued and four numbers from 1000 to 9999. Because our alphabet uses non Latin characters we only use the Latin ones (A, B, E, Z, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, T, Y, X), so that they can be readable if the car travels abroad. Also, we do not recycle plates from cars that have been retired. Once a car retires, the plates retire too. They are never issued again. Also there are no Vanity Plates in Greece.
The only sticker we have is the safety inspection sticker. For a new car, the first inspection is 4 years after the car gets its plates. And after that every 2 years. We do not have a sticker for the region. Instead, the Hellenic Republic Seal is embossed on the plate.
There are no digital license plates here. To be honest I do not like the idea of them. Expensive and with a subscription? NO THANKS.
Yes, the plate is assigned to the vehicle…therefore if I need parts for it, I only need to tell the employee the tag # and they can pull up my exact vehicle along with all information associated with it. No need to go through the whole year, make, model, trim lvl, engine displacement etc…at least here in Portugal
What about your taxi plates?
They don’t follow the “EU standard size format” and look like the older “pre EU plate” style?
This has lead me to believe that your taxi plates are “reused”?
Just asking because I’m curious and your “area/region codes” are a bit confusing, seeing as they are different when it comes to cars and motorcycles (in some cases).
@@klaspeppar5619I cannot speak for other countries but in Finland at least, taxi plates are just regular plates. What makes car a taxi is the yellow taxi light on the roof. I cant recall seeing different plates than normal on a taxi cab, assuming thats what you meant?
@@Kuutti_originalIn Sweden, taxi plates are yellow and often with a small T on them too.
@@Kuutti_original In the netherlands taxis always have blue plates instead of the yellow ones for normal cars. But in germany taxis have the normal white plates that everyone else has.
European plates are very unique from country to country. They just seem very similar to you because you're not used to them (the same way many American plates look like garish mess to us). European plates (and especially plates of EU countries) share a common design language and principles, but they each have a unique and quite recognisable expression of those - different colours, typeface, number of characters, or groupings give a wide range of possibilities.
And size. For example, Finnish plates are smaller than Swedish or Estonian plates.
Most of them are very recognizable, but I do find it hard to distinguish some of them, like the ones from Poland, Slovakia and Germany. Only when I’m close enough to see the country letter, I’ll see where it’s from.
@@anouk6644 ... Yes, and now that Hungary has changed its registration plates to a totally new system they also from a distance now look like German plates.
No such thing as "very unique"
Great points you make. The more I would know about Different Euro plates, the easier to tell the difference it would be 🎉
Our plates are clear to read, not spammed with flags n sht. You want "your own design" so people know all about you.
That's the difference.
Especially in Germany it is easy to locate: Of cause there are the National Codes (A = Austria, DE = Germany, NL = Netherlands, ...) but Germany has the regional codes (Area Codes) as well. They state the city or district. Like shown example: RS is city of Remscheid. It has 1 to 3 letters. Berlin has B, Hamburg has HH (Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg), Cologne has K, Munich has M and the Oberbergischer Kreis (district) has GM for the city of Gummersbach and the Hochsauerlandkreis.uses HSK. The Bundeswehr (army) has Y. Other features are an H after the digits for historical vehicle, E for electric or Year/Month for seasonal usage. Temporary plates have red lettering.
Registration plates become valid with the official seal of registration in form of a sticker, following the area code and bearing, in colours, the seal of the respective German Bundesland (federal state) with the name of the state and the issuing district authority added in print. The rear plate bears, above the official seal, the vehicle safety test sticker. This test is obligatory three years after the first registration, and every two years after that. The expiration date can be seen at one glance, as the sticker is attached with the month of expiration pointing upwards.
Modern German plates use a typeface called FE-Schrift (German: fälschungserschwerende Schrift, tamper-hindering script). It is designed so that the letter P cannot be altered to look exactly like an R, and vice versa; nor can the F or the L be forged to equal an E, etc. Another feature is the equal width of all characters, different from the old DIN 1451 script which had been in use since the introduction of the current system, in 1956. FE-Schrift can be read by OCR software for automatic number plate recognition more easily than DIN 1451.
The old German white horizontally oval plates , probably from Bavaria - I'm not sure - were probably the funniest and coolest of all known plates made in the world ever.
@@JesusMagicPanties The oval plates were for customs. If You wanted to export a car You get one of those. Nowadays You get a normal sized plate, without the blue EU-Band, 1 to 3 letters for the city/county, a RED sticker from the city/county, 1 to 3 numbers, 1 letter and a red band on the right with three rows of two numbers reading day, month and year (from top to bottom) that states the last day it is legal to drive in germany.
@@haselmaus8054 Thanks. I didn't know it.
In Italy we add a second blue band at the other end of the plate with the code for the province the car cones from (RM for Rome, MI for Milan etc.).
@@arx3516 What about additional plates with personal information, account number and pin?
(Shoe number optional)😄 Could be put on the door, for instance.
Some Additional Information about German Plates:
There can be an additional letter behind the random Sequence. An "E" for electric or hybrid or an "H" for historical if the car is over 30 Years old.
If the regional Code starts with a Y and only numbers behind it means it is a vehicle of the Army (Bundeswehr).
If you see a normal regional code with only numbers behind and three small numbers on top of each other it means the car is only registered for 7 days.
It is the date until the plate is valid. The top number is the day, the middle number the month and the bottom number the year.
An interesting addition: if the Plate in germany starts with 0 it's a high ranking diplomat. i.e. 0 -17 - 1 for the ambassador of the USA its (This is a diplomat) - (country code) - Rank of the diplomat, the higher the number the lower the rank) normally these plates have only numbers but they can have a H for Historic too. And if it is stolen it gets a letter in the end too. i.e. if the US Ambassador gets his plate stolen the new plate would be 0 - 17 - 1 A and if he had an oldtimer it would be 0 - 17 - 1 H
I'm an American expat who lives in Amsterdam now. I have grown to like the European style license plates now. They are are bit more sophisticated but also easy to read and recognize. But North American plates are more fun and colorful. I do like the wider aspect ratio of the EU style as well. I also miss having my custom vanity license plate from Florida!
I touched on this on one of my videos on my channel that you actually reacted to!
Honnestly, I prefer American license plates, because their multiple differences make them harder to be read by automatic radars.
Also number plate recognition! Used more and more, not only to check parking licenses, access permission, but also registration on highways for traject speed, tax, and surveillance.
And plates were connected to the driver in Belgium, to the vehicle in the Netherlands, to the district in Germany and France. So there is not one system for the EU, let alone Europe.
Hey @Kerleem I like your channel as well. I thought you'd be watching this channel too! And I actually think I commented on a video of yours where you compared EU plates with US plates! Small world....
I remember that from your video, that’s what I was thinking of during this one. Hope you’re doing well! 🎉Big fan of your videos 😎 @kerleem
@@AngelinaJolie734 This is the motive here in Europe is compulsory to have the plates well mantained. You are not going to pass the car mechanical safety check and the police can fine you if you have your plate modified or unredeable. They would think you don't want to be recognised by them and they would consider you a safety hazard (because you are going to not pay tolls or are going to comite a crime and use the car to escape....) and fine you or arrest you.
In Finland and Sweden the plates, since many decades, belong to the car.
In Finland you can "discuss" with the authorities and get a "suitable" plate, as the standard plates has 1-3 letters - 1-3 digits, example AUD-I, JML-I (a car belonging to former rally driver Jari-Matti L.)
In Germany, and I think in Austra, the plates belong to the owner, and in Germany you can choose the letters and digits except the first 1-3 which belong to the region where you live.
And that "discussion" costs 850 € in Finland.
It is possible atleast to get a custom plate in Sweden, they look the same as regular plates, the only diffrence is that u dont have to have numbers . So u can have a plate that says " Daddy " or whatever lol
Technically the plate sticks with the car, as long as it stays in the same city or district. If you sell the car and it changes the city/district, it gets a new numberplate and the old one is free again.
The Netherlands have a similar system. The plates gets issued sequentially when the car gets registered for the first time. It stays with the car till it gets scrapped or exported out of the country. We've had several letter/number combinations, but no combination has ever been re-used. Since the 50's every car in The Netherlands has had its own unique plate. Bonus is that you can tell approximately how old a car is, by its licence plate. My own car (a not so common US brand car) got re-imported into The Netherlands and got its original Dutch plates back when re-registered.
All countries in Europe the number belongs to the car, certainly in UK, Ire, Nor, Den, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal etc.
Some countries allow private played, bit it still has an original number connected to it.
Certain countries, like Norway also allow alias plates.
I'm a big fan of your channel.
Unfortunately this time you were refering to a video where they missed to do there homework properly.
Only three examples :
We don't use 2-letter ISO codes for the country on our plates.
It's usually the same acronym that was attached as an oval sticker beside the national licence plate when we were travelling throughout Europe 50 years ago.
This can be either one letter like B for Belgīe, two letters like NL for Nederland or three like SLO for Slovenija (part of Yugoslavia back in the days)
Same goes for German cities or counties. The length varies.
F = Frankfurt am Main
FF = Frankfurt (Oder)
FKB = Frankenberg.
The bigger the city, the shorter the letter code, the more space on the plate to register vehicles.
The order and length of blocks on the plates and the fonts vary from country to country. Some countries have a second blue field on the right hand side. Some have additional stickers, some don't.
Thanks for the information and corrections 😎👍
ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) is now ubiquitous in the UK. Many car parks use it to enforce non-payment and overstays. Police vehicles constantly scan plates and ping if there is one of interest, for example no valid insurance. Safety cameras read them, including average speed cameras which record the time taken by a vehicle between two cameras maybe a couple of miles apart, using the plate to link the two times. Toll crossings like the Dartford crossing use them to take payments or issue penalties. There are static police cameras always scanning at key locations. Cameras in London (including on buses) enforce bus lane compliance. Traffic authorities use ANPR (anonymised) to calculate the speed of traffic between two points, then they can display the time to the next junction "To junction 10.. 12 minutes". All this, for better or worse, is possible because of clear and consistent license plates.
In Germany, the region code is for city/county/district, and you can't have some combinations for historical reasons.
My coworker was really pissed he couldn't have "boss" for example, because "BO - SS" just doesn't fly. (Also reminds me of a fellow trainee back when I was one, too, whose mom went to register his car. he wanted her to register a plate with his initials because that ended up as Ente (duck). He was pissed because she picked "Enti" (not a word except maybe in toddlerspeak) because she didn't like the numbers offered...)
As a kid on trips to vacations, we always hunted for words and tried to build sentences.
Digital license plates are a stupid, unnecessary point of failure.
. License plates exist to be read from a distance, you don't need to waste power or make yourself hackable to do that when you can just have a metal plate. They're useful for criminals or other people trying to have action hero/Bond cars, though. But I guess they show how cool you are for adding useless tech to your live, just like smart door locks and such.
SA, SD & SS are also out in NL, for obvious reasons. Next to that the royals & diplomats have their own combination.
Was your co-worker's new car a Citroen 2CV by any chance? ;-)
To add to the german license plates.
The region code can be 1, 2, or 3 letters long. Then there are 1 or 2 more letters, and a 1 to 4 digit long number. After that, some cars may also have an "E" for electric vehicles, or an "H" for historic vehicles. All the letters and digits of the number together have to be at least 5, and at most 8.
So if your area code is a single letter like "B" for Berlin, and you only want one letter after that, then your number must have at least 3 digits (or at least 2 digits with an "E" afterwards).
The letters and number can be requested to be something you want for a one-time fee of around 10-20€.
Thats not true, there is no minimum amount of digits. You can always have 1 letter and one digit only. But of course theese plates are rare as heck and very difficult to come by. So you can do B-V8 as a very short plate for example to fit an american muscle car. And back in the day of the non EU plates, the letters were of different width, so you could make even shorter plates using I or J and 1.
There are 3 types of plates in Croatia
a) basic (the first two letters are the abbreviation of the city, followed by numbers and letters)
example: ZG 578-AZ (plate from the capital Zagreb)
b) paid plates (same format as the basic ones, but you can choose numbers and letters) the plate is paid for one-time
c) custom - the price is around €500 and the plate is valid for up to 5 years, after which you have to pay the fee again
----
There are also several colors
White background and black letters are standard
White background and red letters - for special vehicles (mainly large trucks for transporting bulk cargo)
White background and green letters, temporary plates for foreign vehicles, with Croatian registration (for foreigners working temporarily in Croatia)
Yellow background and black letters, Croatian army
Blue background and yellow letters, diplomatic plates
Cool! Thx for these detailed information! I love it. By the way in Germany you have also "colored" licenceplates! White background and red letters belongs to car dealers, white and green for farming vehicles. AND sometimes there are "season plates". Oh, I forgot the plates for classic cars and electric cars! Example: XX-YY 1234H (the "H" at the end stays for "historical vehicle") or XX-YY 5678E (the "E" stay for "electric car")
The licenceplates of our german "Bundeswehr" (german army) looks like this: German Flag Y - 600 234 (white background black letters!)
In Poland we use it different system :D
example : plate SR 12345 - first letter is a "state" like region - 2nd is a city -- S like Silesia region R for bigger cities SR is Rybnik .... smaller cities like in Germany have 2 letters -- fe. SRB - S = Silesia RB city Raciborz .... unlike Germany we don't have just 1 letter for front of the plate (in Germany just B is Berlin, just S is Stuttgart just M is Munich).
Army and Police have their unique first letters
white background and black letters is the standard
white background and red letters -- short time plates for test drive or export, etc (usually for 1 month)
white background and green letters - for dealerships
green background and black letters -- same as standard numbers but for electric cars only (no hybrids)
yellow background and black letters + an icon of and old car = plates for antique vehicles (usually over 30 years old and require a lot of special documents to get them)
Blue background and white letters - diplomatic plates
before our plates were black background and white letters for almost 100 years
We also have smaller format for bikes, mopeds and 4 wheel light cars without license- only rear plates -- in same combinations but shorter 1 symbol fe. SR 1234, with different background colors and letter colours as well
We also have short plates for US/Japan market cars with no space for euro format standard plate (52 cm wide)
it lacks symbol of city and it contains just 4 symbols instead of 7 or 8 like on a standard plate . It can have a form of:
S 123
and you can buy a custom plate for about 220 euro
it has a format of Sn xxxxx -- where you can choose n = 0 or 1 to 9 and x= letter or number (3-4-5 symbols)
for example you can buy a plate S1 ICE or S4 AUDI or W1 CKED or P0 RSCHE or G0 HOME :D or F0 RD302 only for standard or green background plates. The other types you cannot customize. Paid plate stays for a car, if you sell you car you can not keep the plate :/ But the new owner now can keep them (before he had to pay 2nd time)
For b) and c) in Croatia you can buy any symbols (how many ?) or you have a city symbols in front ?
@@wyrazowfkp
"Ordinary" paid ones, the first two letters are the city, and then you choose numbers and letters in the ZG-123-AB format (if free) - pay only one when you choose
"full custom" - you have numbers and letters (without characters ČŽĐČĆŠ) you can choose whatever you want in a format of 7 letters (as long as it is not offensive) and it is paid for 5 years, then you have to pay again
when you sell the car the all plates can go with it, or you can keep the plates for the new car or pay the police to keep the plates for you for up to 6 months, after that if you haven't used them, they go back to the selection
Czech here. Our most common plate identify region something like - 3S5 2544. The S part means Středočeský region - central Bohemia. There are special plates for old veteran (30+ years) vehicles (they are greenish) and I think also diplomats have some sort of different plate. But you can also find older plates that are on vehicles that have had only one owner until recently (because a few years back, everyone had to change a plate if owner changed, now they dont). Funny enough my Octavia broke down and I have borrowed 1997 Ford Escort from a friend, and it has the original plate which is something like MEJ - 4590 (the number is wrong). Anyway this old plate identifies the county - it's literally the city region (very small area) where the car was registered. There is no EU sticker (since we joined in 2004 and the plate is from 1997). In this period there were even some yellow plates (yellow background) which identified company vehicles - like service cars.
0:11 - They're called "matrículas" in Portuguese. 😉
Ours have been following a sequence since the beginning and they have 3 pairs of 2 digits. The early ones had two letters and four numbers, with the letters at the beginning (ex: AA-00-00), when all the possible combinations of that series were used up, the letters changed to the end (ex: 00-00-AA), then to the middle in the following series (ex: 00-AA-00) and when that series ended in February of 2020, a new series with four letters and two numbers started (ex: AA-00-AA) and that's the one being currently used. Also, our plates don't have expiration or renewal dates. They are issued with the first registration of the vehicle and last until the vehicle is scrapped.
6:50 - Vanity or personalised plates are not allowed in Portugal. The UK is the only european country I know that allows them.
13:05 - My thoughts: I agree with everything you said about digital plates. The ability to "talk" to other drivers is also a big no-no. As if today's drivers didn't already have enough distracting things inside the vehicle...
To my knowledge at least Denmark and Sweden have vanity plates, though for a hefty fee (>>100 Euros)
In the Netherlands we call them number plates and we have the same ‘numbering’ system as you. We ran out of options on the 3 sets of 2 digits some time ago. My car has a AA-000-A design. We have also had 0-AAA-00 Those have less possibilities because all 3 letter words and abbreviations are excluded.
In Belgium you can also get a custom license plate. I believe it costs about € 1000
@@anouk6644 - We still have two sets of options before we eventually go to the AAA-00-00 format but like in your case, the current format and the two that'll eventually follow (AA-AA-00 and 00-AA-AA) will also have less option due to the combination of letters that will form words that are already listed as not possible. Nevertheless, even now I've seen some funny ones, like AJ-17-AX, AR-25-GH or BA-13-RN, which looks a lot like Bayern. I've even seen an Audi A1 with this plate: AU-56-DI. 😄
@@module79l28 With that last one they must have waited with the registration until that combination became available 😄
I always try to make a word or set of words with my number plate so it’s easier to remember. This time it’s difficult because I only have XD in it. Maybe I should see it as a written emoji 😆
@@anouk6644 - We had the XD combination in 1991 (letters at the beginning), in 2004 (letters at the end) and in 2019 (letters in the middle). I call those "the happy number plates". 😄
You have a "G IWrocker" plate in the background. Thats of my hometown Graz, Austria. Also the hometown of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yeah, I sent it to him. Also from Graz. :)
@@andrejluneznik9254 Daunkschean
@@andrejluneznik9254 Hab das Video gesehen. Super Idee! 👍
"I+Tiroler Wappen+Wrocker" wäre auch gegangen. Soll jetzt aber überhaupt keine Kritik sein! 🙂
@@horstmitteregger7977 Bitteschön.
@@tubekulose Ja, aber daran hab ich nichtmal gedacht.
Here in Austria the Vanity plates still have to conform to the same rules as standard issued plates, so in the left is the country-part-abbreviation and the national code of arms, and the part right from the national code of arms is free to choose, but has to comply to standard rules: start with a letter, end with a number, 3-6 letters/numbers, and the letters and numbers must be in one block each. (So its not really a vanity plate you got sent, but a custom plate that would not be legal to use). (but for example if the right side would be "IWro 1" instead of "IWrocker" it would be a legal vanity plate
7::49 i want to mention theres a hiccup, switzerland does not use the same design and we have our own sizes, front and rear are different, the rear plate because were not in the EU does not have the banner indicating the country, it just has the swiss flag on the left and the canton on the very right. everything in between is just numbers and the abbreviation of the canton its registered in, aka not a license plate, quite literally a number plate. we dont use stickers to tell if it passed inspection, for that we use our registration, everything you need to know inspection wise is on that and all of the modifications are documented there. the front plate we use is actually completely empty and smaller except for the abbreviation and the numbers. a lot of germans tell me theyre jealous because i quote "ts not a big white piece of metal that smiles at you weird every time"
9:05 it can be random but we can choose which letters and numbers we want to have as long as no one else claimed that combination. Many people decide to use their insignia for the two available letters and for example their birthday or wedding day for the numbers. The First Part can be between one and 3 letters long. B for Berlin or CUX for Cuxhaven for example.
In Spain years ago we had a plate that indicated the Provincia where the car was from with one or two letters, four numbers and two letters. For example if the car was from Sevilla, the plate was: SE-0000-AA and if the car was from Madrid it was M-0000-AA or MA-0000-AA if the car was from Málaga. The numbers and letters were correlatives to the Provincia. You could see this two last plates in real life because the provincia code were different making feasible encountering the two of them. This correlation indicated the year you put the car on circulation. When we changed the plates to the european standards we put the blue band with an E (España) under the European's stars and four numbers and three letters. 0000 AAA. They always are correlative and tells you what year was the car put on circulation. The plate number is the car ID and you can change owner but not plate number.
The safety checks (we call it ITV: Inspección Técnica del Vehículo/vehicle technical inspection) is a sticker that you put on your right upper corner of your windshield and it's compulsory. If you don't put it or is not visible you are going to be fined because the police is going to think you didn't pass it and the car have to be retired of circulation. You will be fined too if the plate is defective or too dirty and you can't read it.
I think a digital plate is not a good idea. You pay tolls, parkings, radars... with your plate number (a.k.a. car ID) and the police always have to be capable to read the plate number. A digital one is a nightmare for the police, a highly breakable piece of the car and too expensive to be funtional. I don't think any country here will be happy to pass a law to permit this kind of tech. And I'm not going to talk about the probability of hacking it.
I never saw a customized plate here and I don't know if it's a possibility in Spain.
In NSW Australia, you buy a new car, the dealer registers it for you then the next two years you just pay the renewal fee (around $100) and pay the compulsory third party insurance (CTP or green slip around $600 or so). After that, to renew the rego you need to get a roadworthy certificate (pink slip. $45 for local mechanic to do) and still pay the rego and CTP fees.
Thereafter you need a pink slip every year. The actual number plate stays with you until the car is no longer registered or you elect to change it. NSW has a selection of coloured plates (to match your car) as well as vanity plates. Vanity plates are expensive.
If your car goes out of rego, the police have number plate recognition in their vehicles so they will pull you over and physically remove your number plates. Which means you really can’t drive the car (unless it’s really dark out…).
In Victoria the CTP is part of the rego fee and you only need a RWC (road worthy certificate) when you sell the car.
Norway have 2 different standard plates. The main plates are two letters followed by 5 digits. This can be found on just about every vehicle. The other plate is 2 letters and 4 digits. These are used for anything that only requires 1 plate, like motorcycles, moped, trailers, agricultural tractors and machines, and some heavy equipment like mobilecranes etc.
These plates have the EU standard. Black writing on white background with a black border. On the left is a blue section with "N" and the Norwegian flag.
The XX 12345 plates also come with a green background for smaller commercial vehicles.
The two letters used to link to the district the car was first registered, but you CAN pick your own letters.
In 2016 Norway launched the ability to get personalized plates. You can have just about anything on it, as long as it's not more than 7 characters. The price is high, at NOK 9000 ( around $850 ). NOK 8500 goes directly to a traffic victims fund. The price was set to discurage people to just register a lot of plates for fun.
When you buy personal plates, these are yours to keep and you have them for 10 years. After 10 years to need to "renew subscription". If you choose not to, that combination will then be free for someone else to pick.
Every vehicle have it's own unique licence number, just like the VIN, and these follow the vehicle untill it's choped up.
The personalized plates follow the owner. When you get a personal plate, you log on to the DMV and link it to the vehicle you want to use it on. That vehicle needs to be registered to you.
Now you can take off the xx 12345 plates, and put on the personal plates.
If you sell the car, you take the personal plates off, put on the xx 12345 plates, and unlink it at the DMV website.
Easy :D
For a few years we had to have the original plates with us if we were going abroad. Now we don't. At least not when we're going to Sweden.
I got my personal plates back in 2018. At first it was abit weird. Now it's just normal. You see alot of cool plates out there, and it's just awesome :D
You can usually tell which country the plate is from by the font, background color or if you can't recognise that, then the letter with the blue background.
It was funny that you found "53 styles of plate" in Arizona a lot - here in Queensland Australia you have a choice of 250 designs costing from $175 to $8,500 (I just found on the PPQ web site). Plus, they have auctions where people will pay tens of thousands for certain character combinations.
Holy shit!
@@IWrocker I know - crazy right?
Vanity plates are available in the UK, but have to conform to the normal rules of letters and numbers. So there are a lot that use 4 to represent A, 5 to represent S, etc, resulting in some unusual spellings or abbreviations. So MR51NGH would be a good plate for a Mr Singh.
Both my children have personalised plates. I've never had one and never will.
There are rules that have to be followed but some people push their luck by using a non-standard font or messing with the spacing.
Someone gave the example of having a plate MR51NGH
This plate would be illegal in the UK as there must be the correct spacing so it would have to read MR 51 NGH
Mate you must live in Gravesend because I’ve seen that reg MR51NGH on a black Mercedes around there 😂
@@tempromental ... Well maybe MR51NGH likes to travel, and actually comes from miles away. 😂
@@terrymurphy2032 ... No such plate would have ever existed in the 1980s, the registration layout you show is wrong. B11 OCK would have been the only possibility, also B11 OCK would have been a private plate as actual registrations started at 21, so as example it would start at B21 OCK. B1 to 20 OCK being kept for private sale. BO11 OCK could have never been a proper UK number plate as the sequence is wrong for the 1980s registration system. B11 OCK or B111 OCK would have been possible but not BO11 OCK. The plate however would have been possible in the new registration system as a Birmingham area registration in 2011, but would probably never have been issued.
@@terrymurphy2032 ... That's what I meant by private sale. DVLA withheld all numbers before 21 for private sale also 111,222,333, etc, etc. Registrations in the 1980s were like this ... B657 DGN, B371 KPG, B621 MOO, B36 GEV. So BOII OCK would not have been a possibility, Only B11 OCK, B111 OCK as cherished plates (private) or B49 OCK, B377 OCK, B588 OCK etc, etc, as normal issued plates.
In NL the color of the plate can indicate the use. The default color is yellow, blue is for passenger transport like taxi / bus and white is used for temporal usage, so if a wagon is small enough that is doesn't require it's own plate, it can use the plate plate of the car/truck pulling it, while it's being used.
You can also determine from the license plate which year the car was put into use. I am not allowed to post a link, so you have to search for the RDW license plate system. I'll add an example here:
Jaartal Combinatie
2006 XX-999-X
2008 X-999-XX
enz.
UK plates can only be “personalised” if you use a standard, legally issued plate that can be ‘misread’ as something else. The current plate layout is two letters, two numbers, a space then three letters, (AB12 CDE). Reading some of the numbers as letters you get examples like FA57 CAR = FAST CAR.
System used goes mostly:
Blue ribbon with international code for country (with 12 stars if EU member), then 1-3 letters for area (but where I live, we always use 2 letters and they usualy mark main town or city - BG for Belgrade, NS for Novi Sad...), then 3-5 numbers and 2 letters.
Fun fact: Turkey and *Kosovo use 2 digits for area codes.
Fun fact 2: In Bosnia they used to have 2 letters for area, still used in all other former Yugoslav states. But now the jave NNN-L-NNN (N number, L letter AETOJKM which is read the same in Cyrilic and Latin, but not using PHXCB), so the locals can not indetify who is from where is kill each other.
8:55 The sticker of the state is a tax sticker. If you didn't pay the tax for the car it gets removed and it's easy to see for the police. Then the sticker of the state does not only show the state but the county, too. In the example the car is out of Germany (D), town of Remscheid (RS), county Unna (Kreis Unna) in the state of northrhine westphalia. The pink sticker is the TÜV (safety inspection) sticker. It's a different color each year, you need to do the test ever 2 years. The number in the center says the year it expires and the digit that is in the 12 clock position shows the month it expires. The area around 1-12-11 is always blacked to make it easy to see from a distance how the sticker is placed. A police officer is able to see without problem with the help of the color and position of the sticker if the car missed the safety inspection. That is only a backplate. A front plate will only have the tax sticker and no TÜV-sticker. In Europe you are required to have two license plates - one in front and one in the back. Plates have a special you have to use and they have to be a reflective material, that even the license of a parked car in the dark is visible without license plate lights.
Identifying the country in Europe is easy. Just check the blue ribbon on the plate. There will be the country short - GR for Greek, GB for Great Britain, D for Germany, I for Italy, F for France, LT for Lithuania etc. And it will always be more easy to identify a car in a criminal case, because country, state etc is all on the plate (at least in Germany)
Digital plates are stupid. A plate must always be visible, even after an accident. What if you loose power. Just think about phone displays, how easy they are damaged etc.
Also in Europe, the standardised system allows for both knowing which country it’s from, on the left with the letter of the country, and it can be read by automatic radars and all, so traffic control and law enforcement can easily find the cars and send the driver the fines for speeding etc. Also they are very good for reflection at night. And just fyi, in France you also have the right section where you can add the region of wherever you want (the one you live in or you’re from). Also now the plate in France are I think for life, you get assigned a plate number and you will keep it from vehicle to vehicle (I’m not 100% sure of that but I think it is)
In Norway, in addition to standard size, we also have US size for cars from the USA and Canada and can have personal plates.
In Finland, the format of the register is XXX - 123, in Estonia the register is "upside down" 123 XXX, without a dash. In Sweden, the register is XXX 123, also without a dash.
Here in Luxembourg there are no vanity plates per se... but you can choose the plate numbers (either 5 numbers or 2 letters followed by 4 numbers) for an additional 200€ during registration if the number is still available. As a result many have an abbreviation of their name and birthday (or of their child, date of marriage, stuff like that) as their plate number. Since you can keep the plate number when you buy a new car, some are driving their entire life with the same number.
Also, some have reserved plates (Buses are B, BB or BU, Government vehicles, including Police and Firefighters, have AA on their plates, Volkswagen often come with a VW even if not asked for a special number...), so not every combination is actually possible to get.
UK plates identify the year the car was registered, and that have a certain size and font. As part of the driving test that u should be able to read the numberplates from a certain distance, and also be able to be read by ANPR cameras.
PS , there are also special lettering that is used for state officials , Like AA - royal house , CD core diplomatique , ( diplomatic plates )
The simple-looking Dutch license plates look random to a foreigner, but all contain codes such as in which period the vehicle is registered, which type of vehicle (bus, trailer, company car, truck, military police, royal house, etc.). You can therefore recognize from a Dutch license plate whether it belongs to the vehicle. In the Netherlands, vehicles also have to be inspected but do not receive a sticker. Anyone can enter a Dutch license plate via the internet or app, where you can see whether it has been inspected, is overdue for the inspection or has been deregistered. The Dutch license plates only use consonants so as not to create (bad) words.
In Germany, you can't choose the first sequence of letters. It depends on where you live and where you register the car.
However, if you pay an extra €20, you can choose the rest after that - at least if it's "unassigned".
When I moved from Flensburg (FL) one village further into the surrounding area, I had to re-register my car in Schleswig (SL).
For my 20€ I got "UT 500" ... so all in all "SL UT 500" 🙂
It's a "sport" in Germany to have funny or offensive license plates.
The first characters are predetermined or fixed, everything after that is more or less freely selectable ... as long as it is not a Nazi reference.
Yea, that's so true. As a Holstein native, SE:XY number plates are abundant in my hometown. :D
A bit of a fun fact, the region of Finland where I live, The Åland Islands, which is an autonomous region, has their own license plates, they sorta follow the european standard but not really, I think the dimensions are slightly different, and ours have blue letters & numbers on a white background, and all our license plates start with the letters ÅL as in Åland
In a way the Åland plates are the only Finnish plates that follow the old logic of the first letters indicating the region the car is from. Rest of Finland switched to random letters and numbers in 1990.
@@KalleKilponen thanks for telling me that, I did not know that Finland used to do that, but I was born in 1990 so 😂
In Germany the last section of numbers/letters can be personalized if available, to what ever letters (2 letters max) and numbers( max 3 numbers) you want
Yes, but you can have 4 numbers if you only get one letter.
@@userhessenone1469even 2+4 is possible, but the overall length is 8 signs I think.
You said the identification.
A colleague of mine received a fine from the police for speeding in the mail.
At 2 a.m. in Budapest, he drove at 160 km/h ( max speed 50km/h !) . There was also a photo of this in the letter.
The picture was taken by one of the automatic meters.
However, there were some oddities.
He could not prove that he had never been to the site, nor did he know where it made the photo (Budapest is a city with a diameter of about 15-20 km). In addition, he lives in a small rural town and goes to work in Budapest by train. Since he works for the railway, this trip is free for him.
At the time of the photo shoot, his car's engine was at a mechanic and it was standing in his garage with the wheels removed.
This is also problematic, because the mechanic either agrees to testify or not.
However:
The shape of the head and tail lights of the photographed car did not match my colleague's car. The 3-letter 3-number format of the license plate number and the characters were the same. The characters are no longer in shape. And the Montenegrin signal in place of the Hungarian signal was a royal flush.
2 days later another fine, then a third fine.
The locations car time is the same.
It seems that our friend from Montenegro is playing need for speed live in Budapest at night.I don't think the police tolerate this anywhere.
At that time, the appeal was already on the way in the case of the first fine, drawing special attention to the strange discrepancies.
The police admitted their fault and canceled all three fines.
Another case.
They stop me with the Renault Kangoo. I note that there was a special extra long full glass version. Maybe if there were 5-10 of this version in the country... Please open the hood.
I think it's strange, so they tell me that they think it's a stolen car, because that's what the system indicated. I would like to check the engine number, which must be recorded along with the chassis number. When I asked why not they brought a blanket because I didn't have one, they looked at me strangely. Because the engine number is only visible from the bottom ...
By the time we got this far, they told them there were a few problems. It turned out that the license plate, color and type of the car you were looking for did not match mine.
But everything was fine with me. So they let me continue in my road. I knew it wasn't stolen, but the police insisted on their own idea.
I think in both cases there was an error in the background IT system. As soon as the matter was transferred to human management, the error was immediately corrected.
I can't imagine what would happen here if there were only 20-30 different versions of license plates per country. They are as different as US.
You have to decide what is more important. Individual creativity or identification. I think that the US is the first and the EU is the second.
Since I like to be patriotic, I recommend a page for the upcoming video from the eastern edge of the EU
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Hungary
Its a 1000€ to customise the plate in belgium max 8 letters and a friend of mine has had big diesel and his plate is howdareu ( the sentence of greta tunberg)
In Finland standard license plates come with three letters and three numbers with dash between i.e. ABC-123, if you wanna go crazy and buy "vanity plates", you can go either with only one or two numbers i.e. ABC-1 or ABC-10
What I like are personalised plates in Germany: in Kiel many people try to register their cars with KI EL xxxx, KI LL xxxx or KI RK xxxx. I know a guy from Flensburg who has FL UX xxxx. You also see many Porsche 911 with XX XX 911, XX XX 991 or XX XX 964. Its fun to see how creative some people are.
Many Bulgarians living in Germany get plates with 4 times the same number repeating (ex. MA-BC 4444, lots of them in Mannheim). They cost just 20 € extra, but in BG they cost 150 € (it was 500 € until 2021, either way a lot of money for locals), meaning it was a way for them to "show off" when going home to their village for the summer holidays.
I mean in the US you also have registration stickers on license plates but they just put them wherever there’s some empty space and it looks like a mess
Back when I lived there, Wisconsin plates always had one letter followed by 5 numbers with a space between numbers 2 and 3, ie: Q35-274. The letter represented the month of registration, with A/B = Jan, C/D = Feb etc. Every year you would get a different colored reflective sticker designating the year of expiry to stick on to a special area of the plate,. The demo plate I showed was my number many years ago, and was transferred over several of my cars until I sold the last one in LA just prior to my Immigration flight to Oz. Here in WA, the standard plates have 3 letters followed by 4 numbers and they are issues in sequential order, and stay with the vehicle for life. Hard to collect them as well, as if you scrap a car, you are required to hand in the plates even though that particular plate is never issued again. We also have vanity plates, they are blue with black lettering, have a red 'P' on them and can be transferred to replacement vehicles by the owner. This means it is possible to see older cars with the latest standard plate, as they may have spent the first years of their life with a personal plate. Their are also some variations as some organizations can get special plates for some of their vehicles or personal with identifying of the organization, ie: WCE plates for members of the West Coast Eagles AFL team. Just think of the damage a couple of louts with tap hammers could do to a lot full of digital plates! Also, if they actually talk to the state, they can cancel it or put a message on it that may even be false regarding your status without your knowledge. Are they lit up when the vehicle is parked., well that requires power and how long to drain your battery? I am not a fan of this kind of Big Brother state control.
In Germany, you can customize your plate at least a bit, for a fee of course, that's the same bothe sides the pond. But you can choose the random sequence that follows the stickers. It has to be 1-2 letters and 2-4 numbers and of course there cannot be two cars with the same plate. In some areas, mostly where districts got merged and the area code had changed, you can choose the "old" codes, too for your plate. For example, the island of Rügen (Germany's biggest island) was its own district with the area code RÜG before it got merged with some bordering districts to "Vorpommern-Rügen" (West Pommerania-Rügen) a couple of years ago and has now the area code VR. People can choose to register their car with the old code until today, if they want.
In Europe. many parking garages or other access work with automatic front plate detection. So you can‘t enter if the camera can‘t read the plate, or if you don‘t have one.
Customized license plates in Europe many times just mean that the owner has small private parts or some other ego issue.
Or old people need it to find their car
@@userhessenone1469 Wouldn't it be better for them to invest in eyesight tests and glasses? How often do you park in a spot surrounded by the same model of car of the same color as yours ? If someone is unable to identify their car by shape and colour, even a much more subtle feature like a licence plate won't help.
In the UK the first 2 letters designate where the car was originally licenced. Then there are 2 numbers followed by 3 random letters
Our number plates were changed in 2001. The first number designated in September 2001 being 51.
In March 2002 the number plate changed to 12 and in September of the same year to 52. So you can tell how old the car is to within 6 months.
At the moment the number is 73 but in March 2024 it will change to 24
Personalised plates can be purchased but the plate must not have a newer registeration date than the age of the car.
Before September 2001 we had a different style plate but these can still be bought for use as personalised plates
March 2002 it went to 02 then 52, 03, 53, 04 etc👍
There are definitely vanity plates in Europe, however each country has their own limitations on that. For example, in Greece the lettering is always XXX NNNN, you can only request a specific number to be added (and usually the simpler the number, e.g. 2000, 4004, etc. the more expensive), in Poland, as long as the area code letter is there at the beginning, the rest can be almost whatever you want, etc. Talking about area codes, basically with all of EU plates, just by looking at it, not only will you be able to know the country it's from, you can even know which area or even down to the city/town of that country the vehicle was first registered.
The digital plates seem like ridiculous idea to me. I mean, how do they get programmed to show a certain number? Sure as hell some clever hacker will be able to alter that programming. At the end criminals will have a app on their phone, which they can use to set the display to show any number they want.
In Poland plates have blue stripe with European Union flag and PL symbol than it have: 2 or 3 letters on front. The first is for “województwo” which is kinda like state (for example W is for Mazowieckie, D dolnoślaskie) the next 2 or 1 symbolise the city/city district/ region (for example DW is Wrocław in wojewodztwo dolnoślaskie, WND is Nowy dwór Mazowiecki in Mazowieckie, WB is for district in Warsaw named Bielany). Than we have a sticker which says that car is accepted for road. Then w have 5 leters (in format wich you have 2 or 3 letters on front) or 4 (only for 3 letters on front) and they are just random. We have also EV vehicles plates but they’re basically the same just with green background. We have also plates for US imported cars. They are kinda square and short. They have only 1 letter on front for “województwo” and than 3 random characters (for example S 361). We also have a police plates. They are the same but they always have 3 letters front but the first 2 are always HP and than you have a Województwo letters (for example HPD) and then some 4 random characters. And last but not least we have a vintage cars yellow license plates which you can have on your car if it is old and in good condition with many original parts. It has classical 2 or 3 letters on front but then only 3 characters because of big picture off vintage car (kinda looking like Ford) If you want to know more or just see plates just go to wiki page: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Poland (BTW sorry for potential grammar mistakes but I’m just writing this in rush)
Polish plates have typically seven or eight characters.
First letter is for the województwo (voivodeship, highest level of administrative division of Poland).
Next one or two letters are for the powiat (~county, next level of division). Major cities get a single letter (each district of Warsaw gets it's own letter), more rural areas get two.
For example Mazowieckie voivodeship gets the first letter W (because Warsaw) or A (because we ran out of some subsets of W), then districts of Warsaw take most of the WA-WZ range. Three letter codes mostly correspond to the name of the powiat - WOT is Mazowieckie-OTwocki, WPR is Mazowieckie-PRuszkowski etc.
Finally there are four or five characters that identify the car (plates can, since 2022, follow the car after sale), without using letters B, D, I, O, Z because they look too much like 8, 0, 1, 0, 2.
We don't have barely any stickers (except anti-forgery holographic sticker that has to match between front plate, rear plate and registration document). We used to have another holographic sticker with the licence plate number placed on the windshield, but it is no longer required.
We do have vanity plates, with a digit instead of the powiat code (W0-W9 range for example) and 3-5 characters, with at most 2 digits.
Then there are special plates for:
* electric/hybrid vehicles (normal plate but with light green background instead of white),
* historic vehicles (older than 25 years) - yellow background, usual 2-3 letter prefix, 2-3 characters with at most one letter.
* motorbikes - square plates with two rows of letters, first row has the first two or three characters, second has four more.
* american cars that can't fit normal plates - smaller plates with only 4 characters - voivodeship letter plus 3 characters, with at least one digit.
* diplomatic plates - blue background, white text, first letter is always W (because every embassy is in Warsaw) + 3 digit country or organization (like UN) code + 3 digit code for different kinds of diplomats.
Military and different government organizations have their own plates, but they just have their own "virtual voivodeships" - military takes the UA-UL range, government has the first letter H (HP - police, HB - our Secret Service, HC - IRS, HK - Homeland Security/Intelligence, HM - counter-espionage and military intelligence, HW - border patrol etc.). Firemen don't get special plates.
On Digital plates, it looks like they're using eInk (like an ereader) and not an LCD panel. So once it's set it uses literally no power and is off, and you have to physically plug into it and provide it power before you can change it (as eInk holds the last image set without using any power at all). So drive-by hacking isn't an issue, but someone physically going up, removing your plate and reprogramming it could be an issue. But then so is someone driving up and stealing/swapping your metal plate.
EU plates typically have a white background on the front, and a yellow one on the back
Most (if not all) European countries require a regular (yearly) safety and emissions inspection and certification for all cars on the road. The US is a lot more... generous, with some states (and Canadian Provinces) not requiring any check at all.
In Switzerland they auction license plates with low digit numbers or funny digit combinations. For example a Zurich license plate with ZH686 can easily go to $20'000. In 2018 the plate ZG10 (canton of Zug) was sold for 233'000 Franks (about the same in $$$)
In some European countries you can choose your numbers and letters. They aren't really vanity plates but you can for example put your initials and birthyear/ birthday.
If you know and understand the system it is easier to recognise from where car came from. In Poland i could not trace country but also city it is registered in. Easy and practical. More over - some of countries (like Germany) use special font. Each letter and number is designed that way so it could not be mistaken or changed into another one (for example adding a line to P to change it into R). Plates are a tool, not Decoration in the end.
In the uk
Its something like one of the two following examples
R146 KEV
or
DA03 WSK
in the 1st example
R is the year (99)from memory
146 is the unique number
Kev is manufacturer tag and location
Second example is
DA i think is the manufacturers block they purchased
03 is the year (there is also 13 that would mean its been registered in the second half of the year)
Your information is incorrect. The first two letters shows the region the car is registered, in this case DA being (Chester area). the year 03 is 03 first half and 53 second half and not 13 as you stated. 13 being for year 2013 followed by 63 for the second half. In the old registration system you gave as an example R146 KEV the year is in fact 1998 not 1999 as you stated. Also EV was an Essex county registration number.
@@martinwebb1681
Thanks very much couldn't remember the exacts but wanted to show how they could be read thanks 👍
In my opinion, license plates that enable to identify where you live violate the principle of privacy and so should not be so. As far as I know the Dutch plate numbers do not allow such identification and that is cool.
In Poland:
On the left blue stripe above letters PL could be EU stars or Polish flag (on older cars). Number contains 2 letters and 5 alphanumeric characters for cities or 3 letters and 4 alphanumeric characters for smaller counties.
First letter is for Voivodership (‘state’/‘land’), second (and 3rs) for county. Government services vehicles starts with H, army’s with U.
Usually licence plates are white. You can see also green for zero-emission vehicles, yellow for antiqe cars and blue for diplomacy.
Here in the UK we no longer have the blue Euro section on our number plates, they have either been removed altogether or are replaced with a Union Jack flag and either GB, UK or ENG (in the case of England). The strip is green on Electric vehicles. Our number plates are like this eg- AH23DFG the first two letters showing area vehicle is from (AH being a Peterborough area registration) 23 being the year registered and DFG just three random letters at the end. So for example AA-AN is Peterborough area (Anglia), EA-EY is county of Essex, GA-GO is kent (Garden of England) etc, etc. the year is the two numbers and is in two sections a year so 2021 would be 21 then 71 and 2022 would be 22 then 72 etc, etc. In Scotland or Wales they can also show their own flags instead of the union jack, and England also can replace the union jack with the St Georges flag (flag of England) if desired.
now this is something of interest for me
greetings from germany
my country used to have two letter fixed beginings of the region even on vanity plates, then 5 custom letters. It was funny seeing creativity - an orange lambo with po-kemon plate as an example one i saw.
When I lived in Alberta I'd never seen a polar bear-shaped licence plate until I saw a truck from NWT.
German cars used to have oval numberplates and Italian cars had a tiny front numberplate and a full size rear one. Then there's the older Republic of Ireland ones which were red with black characters on them on the rear (the front ones were white with black characters) - the newer RoI ones are more like the French/EU ones.
The rear styling on some European cars is ruined when they've been changed for the US market. Compare the European and US spec Citroen SM - not only did the US spec one lose the glass front and directional headlights, but the trim on the tailgate was changed (they removed the stainless steel top trim) for the smaller US plates and the side lighting on either side of it.
Regarding digital licence plates; in addition to the obvious durability and privacy concerns, there are also safety issues as something digital can be much easily tampered with than with something physical. A physical licence plate would show clear signs of tampering, while you can either hack or mess with the internals with a physical one. Also, what if it breaks? A physical plate doesn't have a display that can malfunction, and if it falls off, you can easily either screw it back on or use zip ties or smtn (my dad drove with zip ties for like a month). Imagine if a digital licence plate starts malfunctioning or even falls off.
Italian here, our current system is two letters + three numbers + two more letters, they are issued sequentially and we have no vanity plates (sadly). Some letters are reserved, like Z plates are only for imported vehicles and Y plates are for local police departments. As of today, the "newest" plate I've seen was a GR plate, so we still have a long way to go before we run out of combinations.
In Switzerland there are just the Kanton (Staat) with the letters and then a number like "AG 123456". There are no custom plates but plates with low or special numbers like "52" or "444444" can be bought at auction for crazy money. A person payed 233K chf (it's around the same in Doller) for the plate "ZG 10".
In Hungary you can order a unique number plate, for combinations of 5-6 letters and 2 or 1 number you pay 435.000 HUF= 1.255 $.
Here, you no longer need to stick a sticker from your car's safety/technical test because it is handled electronically. So, for example, if you pass a camera, it will spot in seconds if it is not valid/expired.
When living in Canada (Nova Scotia) ,the differences with the UK were basically ,no front reg required ,and secondly the reg belongs to the owner.IE if they change car they take the reg with them .
That is different to the UK where the reg (unless personal) stays with the car .The UK reg sort of tells you where the car was registered and also its age .I think the way we have the numberplate helps say the Police when there are getting witnesses to a crash or drive off etc .People might not have the whole reg number but might recall "It was a blue Renault on a 16 plate". Also our plates are reflective ,not sure if the Canadian was was.It was very US is size and also plastered with a sailing ship and " Canadas ocean playground "written on it .
Your Austrian sign has a region code, too. The "G" menas, it was issued by the city of Graz, the capitol of Styria (an Austrian Bundesland). The plate has fine red lines at the top and the bottom, which mimick the Austrian flag and distinct it from all other European plates.
Not every European country has regional codes on their license plates, some countries like France, Germany, Austria & Slovenia have them but some like Finland or Luxembourg dont have them. Custom plates are allowed in some countries like Estonia, Lithuania & Belgium, they are not common aswell but i already saw a few Belgium ones for example. In Germany you can have some kind of custom plate as well but you have to follow the rules for that and actually many people here do that. For a German custome plate you still need the regional code and after that you are allowed to choose 1-2 letters and 1-4 numbers as longs as that combination is not taken already. But like that you can form words and almost none are forbidden, for example if you are from "Dieburg" which has the regional code "DI" you could choose the plate "DI CK 99" or if you are from "Schwalbach" with the regional code "SWA" you could have the plate "SWA G 69" or if you are from Frankfurt with regional code "F" you can have the plate "F UN 100" and as you can see the regional codes can be 1-3 letters. Most people in Germany use those costum plates only to have the first letter of their pre and last name + their birthday or birthyear as the number or just a cool number in general that they like. I am from Germany btw
As a Pole I can say here it's really easy to spot German plates specifically, because they do use a different font that makes all the numbers harder to confuse eg. 3 is more angular so it can't easily be confused with 8 and so on. Plus most people here generally are somewhat aware of what letter combinations of different voivodeships are, so there's a big chance that if the letter combination looks off from a distance it's a foreign plate
I am most familiar with the UK and Irish vehicle registration systems, and I can tell you that they are objectively better than the US version. Taking Ireland as an example, a vehicle gets it registration plates when it is first registered, and it keep that registration number for its entire working life. Prior to 2013, the system worked as follows: 2 digit year code, followed by 2 one or two letters for the County of first registration, followed by up to 6 numbers for a unique vehicle registered in that county in that year. For example, a car first registered in County Westmeath in 2012 would have a license plate that reads something like 12 WH 12345. In 2013 a 3rd digit was added to the year code to indicate whether the car was first registered in the first or second half of the year, being 1 or 2 respectively, so from 2013 onwards year codes were like 131 or 132. You NEVER have to renew registration, even if you move to a different county or sell the car - you only have to notify the national transport regulator and then they issue a new title document to whoever you indicate you sold the car to. So all that nonsense of dealing with state DMVs over registration just doesn't exist. The United Kingdom (i.e. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) is similar although its year-codes are harder to read, it's also based on lifetime registration with the number based on year-of-first-registration. In both systems, commercial vehicles (trucks and buses) have the same system as cars, so there's no need for "Commercial" plates or anything like that. The UK system also does allow some level of "vanity" control of the registration code, but I don't think it's as flexible as the US.
Nobody in Europe AFAIK is even discussing digital plates, this sounds like (at best) a solution in search of a problem.
In Belgium you can have a vanity plate. There is a lot of freedom in what to choose. The only rule is that there must be at least one letter in.
The 26 plates with only 1 letter were registered on the same day the new rule was launched.
There is an Audi with only an "S" on the number plate here a few streets away, and a few streets further away there is a Porsche with only an "O".
It costs you 1000€ to have a vanity plate, a fee that you only have to pay once. If you buy a new car you can keep your number plate. Number plates here in Belgium are linked to a person, not to a vehicle. These vanity plates are very popular.
Mauritius has a good numberplate system as it's date related and at first glance looks like the older French plates (eg. 1234 AZ 75 - the 75 being the Paris code). The first four numbers are the serial number, then the two letters are the month abbreviation followed by the last two letters for the year (eg. 1234 NV 23 for a car registered in November 2023). They look good when stamped from sheet aluminium with silver letters on a black background.
Considering widespread usage of cctv-based car identification/section control/toll collection systems, machine readability of license plates is important.
In The Netherlands, the licence plate is tied to the car. Not to a person. It gets a plate on the first day the car is registered in the country and it will never change until it is scrapped. So, a digital variant will never ever be a thing.
Fun facts: As where with German plates you can identify from which place/region it comes, with Dutch plates (if you know a bit of the history of the emitted plates being 3 letters-3 numbers or vv, 2 letters-2 numbers-2 letters etc etc) you can quite exactly know the month and year of when it was registrated first (being the manufcturing month/year) , as for vanity plates, they are uniquely for high political figures and royalty (CD- 2 or 3 numbers for ambassadors - Corps Diplomatique, AA- 2 or 3 numbers royalty) Imported cars are also give a recognisable combination, as for in France imported cars usually start with an F. French plates have the EU flag on the left with the country abbreviation, and on the far right the departementnumber (which you can use even if you do not live there), Belgium plates are issued to the owner, not to the vehicle, is the owner changes car, his plates go on the new car. As for some exceptions, some "half-member states" as Andorra, The Vatican, San Moreno are different and applied with local legislation. As these states are small, usually the format is also smaller.
What they showed with the German plates and the first bit showing the region of Germany, that is not in every European country. In Belgium it doesn't show the region. We also don't have any stickers on our licence plate. We don't have a technical inspection sticker for regular cars, it's a paper. Vans and trucks do get a technical inspection sticker but it goes on the front windshield, not on the license plate.
I still have an old Belgian license plate (I don't drive much and my car is 14 years old) which is a lot narrower than the current European style plate and is a combo of 3 letters, a "-" and 3 numbers. It can also be numbers first and letters after. But 13 years ago they ran out of letter/number combos so they put a "1 -" in front of it. Now they are already up to "2 -" in front.
I've never heard of a digital licence plate over here. Seems a bit weird and I don't get how that is even legal because you can just change it by hacking the thing. Ideal for criminals! If your licence plate ever gets unreadable due to rust, just get a new one.
In the UK police vehicles and road side cameras have ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) devices fitted with which they can immediately check if the vehicle is taxed, insured and MOT (safety test legal) and the name and address if the vehicle owner. The plate defines where and when the vehicle was first registered and remains with the vehicle all its life. Apparently around 60 million checks are performed every day.
ANPR also in the NL. ANPR is multi connected with different systems...
In Belgium 2000€ custom plate.. Couple years back 1000€..
Now we have licenseplates beginning with 1-abc-123
Now, newer cars 2-abc-123
In € we look at the letter of the nationality on it
We have vanity plates in Sweden but they are expensive
Well, its actually cheaper than some US places like for example California. Though the average "middle class" Swede havent got the same income so... you got a point.
Same for Belgium. I think it's 1000€ for vanity plates, here...
In Germany you can have custom plate, you cant change the region, but the letters/numbers, it still has to go same pattern, so you cant go like 5 letters.
It is always 1-2 letters and 1-4 numbers, however the short plates are usually gone, so example would be F (for Frankfurt) : IW 4444.
But it has to be unique combination, so if a plate is taken for this region, you cant have it.
Sometimes there is additional letter at the end like H for historical cars or E for electric vehicles, which also takes away 1 character.
There are countries, where you can have letters only (CZ for example) and usually the pattern is different for each country, so you cant always get region from license plate depending on country.
Also you can have shorter license plate, usually it is limited to cars imported from US, since the holder is shorter.
That austrien plate-lookalike would not work since it is not adhering to Austrian standards, there are custom plates, but the number of letters is limited and there has to be a number on them at the end. non-custom plates have the number before the letters (with the exemption of the first 1-2 letters that describe the district the plate is from)
I think it would be intersting to see how a US plate would look with a European-ish design. Going by the Austrian plate, we start with Stars and Stripes on the very left (different ones for Canada and Mexico of course), then a letter code for the district or region of the state, then the flag/banner of the state, then a unique combination of numbers and letters.
Most European countries use a different format of letters and numbers, and some also use different colors. Most are black on a white background, but in the UK and the Netherlands it is black on a yellow background, in Belgium it is red on a white background. That is for regular plates.
But there are countries that use exactly the same format and the same color scheme. An example is Italy and France. Some time back Italy introduced a new format being AA-111-AA, and a few years later France simply took over the Italian format. Both have number plates black on a white background. The only way to tell if it is an Italian or a French number plate is by this box at the left that shows an "I" for Italy and an "F" for France.
Before that Italy had number plates that were regional, eg: "Roma-AA111" or "FI-AA111", the first pointing to Rome, the second to Firenze. In France it was a similar system with the last 2 numbers pointing to a region, "un département". Format: 1111 AA 11. These departments were alphabetically ordered. The most desired number plate was one that ended on "75". That "75" points to Paris city center.
Digital plates, like digital IDs, could be 'modified' to show whatever the owner desires.. most interesting.
The Europe plates must have some specs: size, reflection to see them in dark, the blue left bar with the country code, size of the characters and numbers. The font type can vary per country. Als the background and foregropund color of the plate: Germany, France (and more): white and black characters, Netherlands: yellow with black characters, Belgium: white with dark red characters, etcetera.
The German plates indeed have a region code (2 or 3 characters) at the beginning, the rest is mostly letters and numbers.
Netherland: 6 characters (without the A, E, I, O, U, Y, Q, W for confusing those with numbers and readability and not making certain words). Still a lot of combinatons are possible.
Belgium: normaly 7 characters: 1 number, 3 alphabetic characters, 3 numbers, but you can apply for your own plate with e.g. yor name, like GIWROCKR. As far as I know only Belgium allows that.
Here in Finland we have electronic readers in our police cars. It reads plates from both back and front sending information about the car if it's reported stolen, not in registered as driving, if you have wrong plates in the car marked in the err "pink slip?" etc.
Police will stop you and find out what's going on - also check at the same time if you are drunk or under influence of drugs.
Not every country in Europe has the same coding. Dutch license plates for instance don't tell you what region a car is registered in. It's just six random charactes (numbers and letters) grouped into three sections of either numbers or letters like AB-12-CD or 1-ABC-23. Belgian numbers have two groups of threes, but recently started a third group with a single number in front of it, as all combinations with six characters are taken right now, as in ABC-123 or 1-ABC-123. Austrian license plates allow for some vanity. After the regional code (one letter for the state capitals, two letters for all other regions) and the coat of arms of the state, you can have up to six characters. You can't mix numbers and characters though, and if it starts with a letter, it has to end in an number, and vice versa. Your license plate for instance is apparently from Graz (G for the capital of Styria), but the IWrocker is not conforming to Austrian rules, so you couldn't put it on a car. G-IWROC 1 or G-1 WROCK would be ok though. German license plate are much more restrictive, but as they allow for one or two letters after the stickers, many people take their initials and maybe the birthday as their vanity plate. Sometimes, cars, busses and trucks operated by the government or governmental subsidaries use a reserved range of plates. In the city of Ulm (regional code UL), vehicles belonging to the city have license plates starting with UL-M and then four numbers. Other people try to make words out of the license plate letter combinations. People in Bad Segeberg (code SE) might register SE-XY license plates, and others from Stuttgart (code S) are all for S-EX etc.pp..
There is a lot to say about European plates.
They are mostly of the same size with a little blue European flag and country letter.
But the rest of the design, fonts and color, varies per country.
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In the Netherlands:
The general plates are yellow with black lettering.
There are blue plates used by taxi companies.
Green plates owned and used by car dealerships or when you want to test drive.
White plates are for light car trailers or bicycle racks.
There are always a total of 6 numbers and letters, and goes on *alphabet.
The plate isn't personal and stays with the car when sold.
Those who know, you can tell by the *combination what year the car is registered and estimate the year of build (unless the car is imported). Although, it's easier to use an app😅 that can give you info about model, year build, engine type etc. just no personal info.
There is more to tell and more rules and exceptions to talk about, but to much to mention.
E.g when you see a Dutch plate that starts with AA, you know the car is owned by the royal family🤴
😉
In Czech Republic these stickers are only on the backplate because they would get damaged fast in the front. I have actually been told by a policeman during random inspection that my plates are reversed ( they are allowed to inspect you and your car wherever they please just as a routine check ) just as they are allowed to ID whoever they want anywhere . Especially annoying inspections involve asking you how come you dont have glasses ( it can be written in your drivers license that you need them ) showing them the medkit every car needs to have .. that its complete and not expired ) .. showing them your safety equipment .. a roadside high visibility vest and a warning triangle . They skip the med and safety kit checks if the car is visibly relatively new and everything probably is there from the manufacturer.
In Australia police use computerized cameras in their vehicles to read plates while they drive around that let’s them know the status of that vehicle registration if it’s reported stolen that sort of stuff
German plates (and other European plates with regional codes) are also very useful for adding that tiny bit more road safety: it makes it easier to spot vehicles that may drive more erratically ahead of you in traffic as they are from a different administrative region (similar to US counties) and may not know the local roads all too well. US plates are like US road signs, too much writing and not easy enough to read at a glance, please join the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals...