"Mrs Redboots" wrote in message
...
Martin Underwood wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 1 Jan 2005:

By the way, why was the letter U not used as a year letter? I can
understand
why I, O, Q and Z were omitted because they are too similar to digits 1, 0
[O and Q] and 2. But what digit could U be confused with?


I think it was considered too similar to V.

I'd have thought that U and V were fairly easy to distinguish - unlike a
letter D, a letter O and a digit 0 which *can* very easily be confused in
the square font that's used on numberplates. OK, so you won't have an O or 0
in the year position, but D and O are allowed interchangably in three-letter
part of the numberplate. DDO, DOD, ODD, OOD and other permutations are
extremely hard to distinguish.