Victoria has some pretty stiff regulations on plates, including for bike carriers that obscure the plate from the mighty “safety camera”. You cannot make your own, you have to buy one from Vicroads. However I have seen a vehicle for months (and have reported it to no avail) with a non-reflective home made plate sporting an entire line of kanji in addition to the rego number and “Victoria”. The rego would be easily visible to a camera in daytime, maybe night with a flash or street lighting, so all must be good. s/cynical
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Typical idea from a city centric driver. People that live in non urban areas would, AGAIN, be slugged with extra costs. We already pay more for our fuel due to transport costs, and have no access to public transport.
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Your idea of increased Fuel Taxes would in fact impact you a great deal. I believe almost everything you buy has been transported from somewhere else and probably over great distances. From the farmer/miner/whatever industry to a storage facility then to a production facility and then to the market and then perhaps to another market and then to a shop where you then purchase the goods.
Bananas from Nth Qld that go to NSW, SE Qld, Vic, SA, WA, Tas and even sometimes back to Nth Qld after ripening is an example. Under your approach if you live in NSW, Vic, SA or WA you would be paying even more than you currently do due to the extreme fuel taxes that would have to be paid. Registration is set at rate that is a socially shared cost. Some benefit more, others less, but all benefit.
If you live in a city, most of them produce very little in the way of food basics eg wheat for flour, vegetables for consumption, meat, milk and so on. If fuel costs went up your prices would skyrocket, so be careful what you ask for.
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Every now and then, I have seen motorists who obviously have a good sense of humour.
On one occasion, I saw a Great Wall ute where the owner had added a chrome plated letter Y at the end of the other letters on the rear, thus reading “GREAT WALLY”.
Just after the last high-performance Falcon Sprint sedans were sold last year, I saw one with a personalised number plate which read “XTINCT”.
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NSW number plates. Personal design. Red on black. Unreadable by the human eye when you are over the age of fifty. Also shonky - blue street signs with yellow lettering. Do these people not know about colour blindness?
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Most government agencies give lip service to colour accessibility but give their ‘artistic people’ open slather on what they deploy - until there are enough complaints for it to become embarrassing.
It is no different with commercial products where we have some on-screen displays that are illegible because of the colour choices and combinations, and they are not inclined to up their game any more than governments.
FWIW there are standards for deploying legible colours for almost any purpose, but they are 'best practice and requirements allow and even enable worst practice as often as not since there is no penalty for doing whatever, excepting to possibly fix it up when called out.
Here is the Vic government standard, noting it focuses on web pages. There are also a lot of weasel words, most quite subtle. Who could imagine a rego plate might be subject to the same issues? They do not seem to care as long as a ‘safety camera’ can snap it.
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I used to work for a large insurance company in Victoria. They had a product specifically aimed at over 50s - the age group I’m in. When proof reading some marketing material I noticed that white text on a light green background (I’m not kidding) was very hard to read and I pointed this out to the General Manager. The Marketing Dept was staffed almost exclusively by people under 40 so no-one had given ease of access any thought at all.
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That did not go where I expected. I expected you were going to post the management celebrated and put all their small print in that colour scheme.
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I have number plate from the department of transport in Queensland for my disability scooter. They don’t cost any money but if I get flattened by a truck they will know who I am. However the other day I noticed a very corpulent neighbour whizzing up and down the street telling anyone who would listen that no one needs plates now. I shall have to check.
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There are many reasons why people might acquire personalised plates, to suggest this automatically indicates some kind of personality trait could be argued to be a little simplistic and/or puerile. I don’t have personalised plates, never have had, but have considered … may one day. There is a lot of variety where I am and the cost is well south of $200 - not exactly out of reach for the average punter. My daily rides (motorcycles) cost me nearly $900 each annually just for rego. So far, I’ve figured I’d rather just ‘blend in’ - as much as you can in a small town.
Whether plates supplied by the regulating authority are legible and identifiable is completely the responsibility of said authority. If they offer colour schemes that don’t work for various categories of people, then more fool them - it’s hardly the fault of the consumer.
There are a number of years where the plates here were produced in a manner where sun damage renders them useless - clearly not fit for purpose. Plod can and will book you for an unreadable plate, yet all you are guilty of is having fitted the plate supplied by the government to your car, and happen to live in the sunniest place in the country. If you ask the government for a replacement they will eventually cave in, but not without some resistance … after all, it costs money to admit you provided an inferior product. I’m sure many consumers have just paid the replacement cost …
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PPQ does extensive testing of colours, colour combinations, reflective surfaces etc. They test during daylight and during night time, at different angles across multi-lane track, at different speeds. Things that don’t work with cameras (mobile cameras, fixed cameras) do not get approved and are not offered as choices to people ordering personalised plates from PPQ.
A big success has been “reflective black technology” - in daylight the plate may look like pink characters on black background but at night when a light is on the plate it looks like dark characters on a white background.
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That is rather interesting. I have photos taken of various colour schemes which give various colour combos much less vision than others. I also noticed that quite a few of the plates also have a clear protective sheet in front of them. One of these I noticed made the number combination almost invisible if viewed from an angle of 45deg or more. I think that it is a money making venture which is at odds with the aim of number plates.
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Our confusion may be understandable. I thought rego plates were about identification, including assuring rego has been paid and identifying vehicles that might be stolen or fleeing an accident or robbery and so on. Since the litmus test seems to be whether a plate can be recognised by a ‘safety camera’ it must be primarily about revenue from the vanity plates and camera revenue, or is that a conclusion a step too far (and if so, why)?
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The technology that authorities use to check “that rego has been paid” and to identify vehicles that have been reported stolen etc has changed.
For example a vehicle fitted with two ANPR cameras cruising around a few blocks will identify more instances of “stolen vehicle”, “driver associated with vehicle has lost their licence”, “unregistered vehicle”, “vehicle may have been involved in a crime or accident” than a would a vehicle simply using two trained officers.
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But the witnesses reporting a fleeing car might not have their kit up and running and be forced to read the rego as part of their evidence and report.
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Whilst driving yesterday, I saw a new vehicle with a Qld number plate 034 AB8 but it did not look like a personalised plate.
It is actually the new series in Qld with 3 numbers, 2 letters and 1 number after the old series of 3 numbers and 3 letters was finalised this year.
Whilst the previous series ran from 1987 to 2020, with each first letter range being exhausted faster than the previous one, changing the last digit from a total of 26 to only 10 will see this range exhausted in a much shorter time frame.
Interestingly, most of the last 10 numbers in the previous series have been registered as dealer vehicles by Cairns largest dealership with the exception of 999 ZZZ.
I assume that they have it but are holding on to it as a carrot to close a lucrative deal.
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Legibility, particularly of personalised plates is a big deal in WA, where they’re fairly cheap I think, and very common.
Interesting to note something not considered when purchasing personalised plates - the cost of replacing when they do become slightly unreadable.
A set of fully customised acrylic plates in WA costs you $650. (A good birthday present for the person who has everything else). If you transfer the plates from one vehicle to another they are inspected at the DoT. If the car has been doing a lot of country driving and the front plate has gone a bit dull or is a bit scratched, they won’t let you stick it back on the vehicle, you must pay to replace them - $247 or something for the acrylic plates. It does appear that the decision on whether the plate is legible enough is up to the arbitrary judgement of the DoT staff member sitting in the office at the time. A different day, a different staff member, I might have been fine.
As it is, my personalised plates are sitting in storage at the DoT (which they arent charging me for) until I choose to get them remade.
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DTMR won’t allow reuse if old numberplates which are no longer in use. If this wasn’t the case, there would be enough of these to keep the current 3 number/3 letter plates to go for years.
Alternatively, they could assign a numberplate to a person which is moved and registered to a new car on its purchase.
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Bought a new car when the new Victorian plates were being introduced a few years ago. (1 number, 2 letters, 1 number 2 letters eg 1AA 2BB). Called my insurer to insure the vehicle and was told the number plate was from NSW and the consultant would not believe me when I told them it was in fact a Victorian registration. It did take some persuasion …
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I’ve been told that when the new Queensland number plates get to 999ZZ9, the next one is 000A0A through to 999Z9Z and so on, so there is far more combinations that the nnnAAA plates that have been around for years.
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