A brief recap: a few weeks ago I’d taken the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing out to run some errands with my wife in Plymouth, Minnesota. I was backing out of a parking space in front of my local Kohl’s when four cop cars came screaming up and “initiated a box and pin on the vehicle,” as the police report says. Hands on their guns, the officers ordered us out of the vehicle, patted us down, and eventually told us the Range Rover’s license plate—New Jersey 34 10 DTM—was stolen, they suspected the vehicle itself was stolen too, and they’d used Flock cameras to track me down over the last two days.
The scenario involving my wife and I is just one of many like it. Thomas noted that the system is 99% accurate today, but it’s performing 20 billion reads a month. That 1% error rate, of which I was a part of in June, makes for two hundred million misreads a month.
As bbbbbbbbbbb said, every state not only has their own plates, but multiple plate designs. Some states, the variations will be completely different colors and number length. Absolutely no consistency.
Many states also don’t (usually) require old plates to be turned in when designs change. My state’s gone through two design changes since I started driving in 2010 and I still have my original plates. I’ve seen people driving with plates from the 80s.