OCR ANPR failure

Here are the final 3 letters on a number plate. The very first vehicle registration in the UK was 'A1' so more correctly the plates were registration plates but have been called number plates for all of Mr Mustard's life.

Sorry it is slightly blurred, it had to be blown up a bit, from this.

The vehicle in question was parked in a resident bay with 6 months still remaining on the permit. The owner was surprised to be given a PCN for not having a permit. It is a PCN that is easily defeated as the car in question on the PCN isn't the one that is parked.

Mr Mustard has though made an informal challenge (the one you make in response to a PCN placed on the car) as if he doesn't the owner of the vehicle which has the plate which was erroneously selected will receive a Notice to Owner in a month or so's time and have the bother of dealing with a demand that is wrong (which becomes legally payable if you don't fight it).

The vehicle which was parked ends with the letters NVG but the PCN has been issued to NVC. This is an error which a traffic warden in a hurry could make but given that they supposedly observed the car for 6 minutes (Mr Mustard suspects they didn't, they checked the whole row of parked cars which took 6 minutes) this is a human error which seems unlikely to have been made.

More likely in Mr Mustard's eyes is that the plastic capped screw which holds the number plate on the car, as fitted by the garage, not by some fool trying to turn two ones (11) into a H to make a name, just happens to be over the horizontal bar of the G which makes it, if you don't look carefully, appear more like a C. The back of the car, was clear.

A traffic warden always notes that they checked all windows (for notes and permits) so had to walk past the rear number plate.

Having eliminated the possibility of human error what Mr Mustard thinks is more likely is that the traffic warden was using computerised equipment which reads number plates (Barnet experimented with these but didn't persist, he thinks) and in this case got it wrong. One presumes that the little computer then looks up the vehicle concerned on the DVLA database and it would have disclosed that the vehicle in question was a blue Toyota not the white Toyota (a different model) which was parked there. It is all very well to use technology to assist you in your work but it shouldn't and can't, take the place of a person's judgment. The PCN must contain a statement of what the Traffic Warden believes - if you don't look at the number plate on the equipment and compare it to reality, there is no basis of belief.

End.