Reply to post: Re: Aussie number plates

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

coconuthead

Re: Aussie number plates

The numbers are a fixed length within a state in Australia, because the plates are embossed in special machines. This is also probably why Victoria didn't do the obvious and add a V in front of the AAA·111 to ZZZ·999 series when that ran out, as South Australia did with an S, They didn't want to buy new machines that could press more than 6 characters!

Supposedly the embossing is so the plate is still legible when the paint fades, but many or all of the plates AAA·000 to FFF·999, issued from 1978 to 1994, were physically replaced anyway when it turned out the paint used faded quickly. I think they may have taken that opportunity to remove duplicates with NSW, since that had been a range formerly used by NSW.

You can still buy available numbers in the old sequence for a fee of around $500. I sat behind the amusing "HAG·000" at a traffic light this afternoon.

The police have in-car number plate recognition and a database that tells them instantly what address a car is registered to – and they are using it at the moment to pick up people who have travelled where they are not allowed under the COVID-19 restrictions. So technology means there isn't much reason any more for needing that information encoded in the actual number (and it would cause practical problems anyway, as most Australians live in a few large cities but move house from suburb to suburb).

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