Flash Car

[skyring]

Flash Car,
originally uploaded by skyring.

Saturday night, and I noticed a police car parked illegally on the Manuka taxi rank. Parked in that it was empty and locked. Maybe, I thought, the policemen are responding to some incident, but judging by the way they strolled back to their car a few minutes later with cups of coffee, I think not.

However, the interesting part was the numberplate. I could read the number quite clearly, but when I took this flash photograph, a strange thing happened: it turned into a blank white rectangle.

I took a few more photographs of regular cars that night and each time I was able to read the registration number easily in a flash photograph. I suspect that this police car numberplate has been treated in some way, perhaps sprayed with a high-gloss varnish, in order that so much light is reflected from a flash that the number can't be read.

What would happen if this car triggered a speed camera or a red light camera at night and the flash went off?

My guess is that no infringement report would be generated.

I was able to blow up the number plate region of this photograph and tweak the contrast and brightness. At extreme settings a number was visible. Some characters were only just legible.

The number was YEZ-51H

Comments

[letterbthe.livejournal.com]

Ah. When I was last in the UK, I saw a spray advertised that you could put on your numberplates to reflect flashes (see http://www.thatgadgetplace.co.uk/?gclid=CKbX4PrFrJACFQ1dgQodIhJ-Ig). I think it may be illegal, but I guess if they can't read your numberplate, they can't track you down to fine you for using the spray! But I'm amazed to hear of it being used on police cars.

PS Read your mention of your crash a few days ago. Hope you're OK. Do tell more!

[atenea-nike.livejournal.com]

It may be an urban legend, but I've always *known* (which means it's general knowledge because I am not what you could call street-savy) that you could do that to your plates with plain old hairspray. Of course it is illegal to do so, but as others have pointed out, if they can't see your number in the photo how are they going to track you to fine you?

[vysion-of-books.livejournal.com]

There was an edition of TV's Mythbusters that looked into various methods of treating/covering license plates but none of them (including hairspray) really worked.

[skyring.livejournal.com]

Well, whatever the cops were using certainly worked, at least to the extent that you'd have to enhance the photograph to reveal the number and even then it might not stand up in court.

Certainly the system wouldn't automatically generate infringement notices. Human intervention required.

And, given that the cops may well be able to claim that they were in hot pursuit of some recalcitrant, I don't know how cost-effective it would all be. The camera goes off, someone has to enhance the photo, an infringement notice goes out to the police department, who respond that officer Bloggs was driving, a fresh notice goes out to Bloggs, who responds that he was chasing down a serial blogger at the time, it goes to court...

[wombles.livejournal.com]

Why does that not surprise me?