There are many popular questions relating to the customisation of number plates in the UK.
"Can I add emojis?" "Can I change or modify the font?" "Can I squeeze the spacing a little?" "Can I bang a rivet into a zero to make it appear as a C?" "Can I fit a yellow plate to the front of the vehicle and a white plate to the rear?" "Is there a legal loophole that allows me to somehow fit a banned registration?"
Unfortunately, a least at present, the official answer to these very popular questions is a firm "No" - and there exist plenty of fines to prove it.
But that doesn't mean there aren't other ways in which a number plate can be made to stand out from the crowd. And the future may well have something to say about the current restrictions...
THE PRESENT DAY
Even at present, there's scope for customisation in the sphere of UK registrations. The plates can feature a border, provided it's not more than 5mm thick, and remains least 10mm clear of the characters that make up the registration. In fact, despite some advice to the contrary, it's even possible to fit number plates with a 3D or 4D effect. It should be stressed, however, that the rules and specifications surrounding this are very strictly governed by the DVLA, and if you're considering going down this road, it's worth consulting an expert supplier who is approved by the DVLA. That happens to apply to us at NetPlates, and we can supply our registrations on both 3D and 4D physical plates, so you know who to come to if you do want to jazz things up a little.
Taking other liberties with physical plate layout or construction is not a good idea, but you can be supremely creative with the registration itself. The more you search, the more gems you're likely to find. And ultimately, if you find a good one, it's probably going to be the registration itself that grabs the attention anyway.
WILL DIGITAL PLATES CHANGE THE GAME WITH REGARD TO CUSTOMISATION?
Although they're not yet in a position to storm the UK market, digital or smart number plates look the most likely catalyst for greater leniency on customisation options. Because of their tracking and, let's say, 'tale-telling' capabilities, digital plates could prove a difficult sell. But, especially since digital plates might offer the Government and the DVLA some benefits, that could mean concessions designed to propel adoption. One of the most likely ways to drive adoption would be through visual customisability. It's a known fact that people love personalising their number plates. And the digital number plate could be oriented to facilitate that.
Digital number plates would take vehicle registration into an entirely new dimension. Whether that would be good or bad is open to debate. But the smart plates' innate tracking potential might open up some new avenues of visual exploration, as the task of recognition steadily migrates to the digital domain, and there's perhaps less onus on the DVLA to visually identify a registration through conventional camera technology.
The current ANPR system - Automatic Number Plate Recognition - is now quite dated. An infrared camera takes a photo of the vehicle, a detection program locates the number plate and scans over the registration, and a character conversion routine isolates and determines the content. This is a decades-old system, and in order to work reliably, it requires the plates to be formatted in a very predictable manner.
But digital technology - let's say, a direct communication between the number plate and an officially-regulated "cloud" - could replace ANPR. That might mean the elements of current UK plates that are mandated to assist ANPR are no longer required.
We should note, however, that the above would not override the need for the public to be able to clearly identify a plate. So it's not yet clear how much scope there would be for visual experimentation. Some of the visual features of UK plates predated ANPR, and were designed to aid the naked eye. For example, in the early 1970s the plates' background colour was altered to incorporate a colour-coding system. The idea of a white-backed plate always residing at the front of a vehicle, and a yellow-backed plate always residing at the rear, was designed to identify the vehicle's orientation. This could be a critical piece of information in all manner of circumstances. It could help pedestrians, other drivers, etc.
WHAT SORT OF CUSTOMISATIONS COULD WE SEE IN THE FUTURE?
To date, the United States has led the way in smart-plate tech, and the smart-plates' customisation potential includes a dark/light mode, and some potential to add a custom message, with a variable font. Although the options available in the US would at present contravene DVLA rules, that could change.
Other possibilities for the future are confined only by the imagination. Imagine this, for example:
A number plate becomes recognisable to the "digital grid", meaning there's no longer a need for it to have camera-detectable properties. There's still a need for other road users and pedestrians to clearly see a registration, and identify the direction of a vehicle's travel. But elements such as the font could be diversified to an extent, because the human eye doesn't need the same level of predictability as an auto-recognition system.
As regards the need to determine the direction of travel; well, whilst that still exists, but there's more than one way to achieve it. Digital plates, in particular, could introduce a completely new means to identify orientation, and that could end the rigid white/yellow stipulation - allowing colours to become a major part of plate customisation. Whilst there would almost certainly remain strict rules on the contrast between background and the foreground characters, perhaps a broader palette of colours could become permissible.
IN SUMMARY
It will be interesting to see how things play out with digital number plates, and for a number of reasons they may not get off the ground. But if they do, they could usher in significant changes to the options on customising a UK number plate.
