I’ve written previously about Governor Rell being determined to do something about certain hazards on the state’s roads. One of her ideas is to start using speed-enforcement cameras.
There’s one problem with that idea, which George Gombossy highlighted in a blog post this weekend:
One of the lesser-known facts in the Connecticut Motor Vehicle Department is that there are at least 83,000 vehicles that share the same license plate numbers. The department doesn’t have a clue as to the actual number, so it’s probably much higher.[...]
For instance, Dr. Ahmed Khan, a West Hartford neurosurgeon, received a ticket from New York City’s finance department, billing him $50 for driving through a red light last year. The camera took a picture of the rear of the vehicle, which included the license plate.
There is no question that the license plate number was the same as the one on Khan’s van, but the vehicle that went through the red light — as is clearly shown in the photograph — was a 40-passenger bus. Khan said he has never driven his car in New York City.
That fact, of course, did not stop New York officials from trying to collect the $50. I called New York City officials and told them that the owner of the bus agreed it was his vehicle, but they would not tear up the tickets without more proof.
One of the key underlying assumptions for electronic tolling, urban congestion pricing schemes, and photo traffic law enforcement is the uniqueness of license plates. I’ve read, for example, about the hellish time programmers have been having in training software to recognize the umpteen bazillion different specialty plates and license plate fonts in North America.
But if license plate numbers aren’t unique to begin with, this would seem to be a problem in jurisdictions where local traffic authorities aren’t always known for their attention to detail.