People are aware of the benefits of Automatic Number Plate Reader (ANPR) technology and how it is used by police to catch uninsured drivers, criminals whose license plates are registered, and people who have cloned car license plates. But what is often overlooked are the issues with ANPR. This article, however, is about those issues.
The first problem, which has only begun to emerge as ANPR technology has become more widespread, is that the equipment can generate false positives. This is because the cameras misread the registration number instead of the license plate being read correctly, but it is misidentified as having no insurance. The most common occurrences of this are when the police carry out roadside checks and scan all passing cars with a handheld device. Cars that are identified as uninsured or criminal are then stopped and the drivers are questioned.
False positives can arise when the officer operating the camera does not have a good view of the plates as they pass by, which can lead to the device incorrectly identifying some plates, for example reading an “8” as a “B”. ” or not. being able to see the whole plate. When this happens, someone who has their car fully insured may be pulled over and asked to prove it. There have been more and more reports of this happening and every time it happens, the police have to call the insurance companies to check whether the car they have pulled over is insured or not. The vast majority of the time they are, and this therefore wastes the officer’s time, the driver’s time, and the insurance company’s time.
The second problem is with license plate cloning. If a criminal copies his registration number and attaches it to another vehicle and then commits a crime with that vehicle, the police may arrest him for a crime he did not commit. Even if the car the offender was driving is completely different in every way from the one you are driving, ANPR will identify your car as a car that requires a stop.
The third problem, and perhaps the most controversial, is whether the ANPR infringes people’s privacy too much. With some cities and counties wanting to cover all their borders with ANPR cameras, all that would need to happen is that a centralized database be created, recording where and when license plates have been seen, and anyone with access to this could potentially charting all the trips an individual has taken across the country.
Whether the benefits of ANPR outweigh these problems is for each individual to decide, but the authorities seem to think that the benefits outweigh these problems.