In article
cks.freeserve.co.uk,
Paul Robson wrote:
On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 03:22:13 -0800, Matthew Church wrote:

"By 2004, the DVLA aims to have merged driver, vehicle and insurance
records into a "single or virtually single" database from which the
number-plate microchips will be programmed".

http://www.geocities.com/lclane2/microchips.html

Anyone have any updates on how this plan is getting along?

Well, the last I heard (and there's about 45 days left in 2004) you
couldn't buy Microchipped plates.

If true it's a typical Public Sector IT project i.e. it doesn't work.

It will annoy a lot of people, and the chips will be as tamper proof as
the others, i.e. not at all. Or people will simply bust them (can you
imagine the amount of hammering electronics on a car number plate will
take).

Or you could simply fake a plate that looks like a real one - so how will
the "automatic detection" know if a car is there or not ?

How will it cope with people who are insured rather than cars - people on
company insurance ?

How will it know the driver is insured to drive the car - all it will
know is that there is *some* insurance on the car.

It can't surely store "insurance validity" - if you cancel insurance will
you detach the plates and take them in so they can be reprogrammed ?

What will happen regarding foreign registered vehicles ?

Getting Microchips for £1.00 is no problem ; hell they are cheaper than
that. Getting something that will work and keep working for £1.00 is a
different matter entirely.


Apparently, there are already a few police cars on the road equipped with
an automatic device which can read numberplates and determine in real
time by interrogating the DVLA computers whether the vehicle is taxed,
insured and (I think) MOTed. This is all done without intervention of the
police officer. It just sounds a warning buzzer and flashes up the number
of the offending vehicle. Apparently they have been very successful in
picking up some of the alarmingly large number of illegal vehicles. I
suspect that this will supercede the need for a numberplate microchip.

In fact, this is my solution to traffic congestion problems - a big
campaign against these vehicles could reduce traffic by about 20% at a
stroke and also make the roads a lot safer ! Perhaps they could set up a
few motorway type toll booths with similar cameras and automatic gates,
with a penalty of instant impoundment of illegal vehicles.

David