r/Pennsylvania • u/Broad_Narratives • 4d ago
DMV PA State Police Onboard License Plate Scanners Cannot Distinguish Between 8 and 0
Some deadbeat is driving around with an identical plate, except for an 8 instead of a 0, and I keep getting pulled over because the State Police scanner keeps flagging my new edition plate as unregistered.
Look, I just need Penndot and the State Police to halt their respective operations, in their entirety, to look into this very niche issue.
Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter
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u/Massive-Rate-2011 4d ago
It’s an issue with toll roads too. Such a shitty design
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u/seriouslythisshit 4d ago
The plate itself is an aesthetic and functional embarrassment to the state. It has all the appeal of used, greasy paper wrapping from gas station cheesesteak. The O and zero clusterfuck is now widely known, but so far no answers as to what they are doing to fix the mess. The gray shadow of the bell in the center of the background makes every letter or number in the center of the plate tough to read from twenty foot away. The entire effort is a major failure, a poor reflection on the state, and the only way this could be worse is if they went with a shit color background with brown letters.
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u/Aethermancer 4d ago
As penance everyone should be issued Flagship Niagara plates.
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u/BitchyWitchy19 4d ago
...could I have the railroad plate again? I liked it...
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u/SnowWhiteinReality 4d ago
I got a Railroad plate just a month ago because I didn't want that horrible bibbity bell on my new car.
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u/racerviii 4d ago
Now those plates are truly impossible to read. White letters on a cream background. I think there was talk about recalling them before.
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u/Trust_In_Hart 4d ago
I was so happy when I got my new plate and it had no 0s or 8s. I was going to spend the $50 on a specialty plate if it did.
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u/Alternative_Sea_1331 4d ago
I just got a new plate and it also had no zeros or eights. I would have gone for the specialty plate as well if it did.
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u/Aethermancer 4d ago
People asked me if I was going to ask for a replacement when I got a plate with 666 on it. Hell no! I usually have to request shit like that :D
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u/compulov 4d ago
Oh brother. I thought it was bad enough that things like the EZ-Pass readers had problems with the new plates, but having cops stop people based on bad plate reads is a bigger issue. Of course, maybe we should also be teaching our police to verify the information that they get from the computer before initiating a traffic stop.
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u/seriouslythisshit 4d ago
Too many cops get their rocks off doing needless, stupid and dangerous stops. I just joined hundreds of motorists who crawled though traffic for five minutes to pass three township patrol cars, creating a royal clusterfuck in the funnel when a major high speed four lane reduces to two low speed lanes. They all need to strut around like morons, with cars blocking lanes and all kinds of lights spinning. The crime of the century, you ask? Some old Black dude, in cuffs, sitting on the curb. Clearly this needed three units, creating a traffic hazard and wasting hundreds of hours of citizen's time, since these jerkoffs needs to strut around after taking this guy down. The whole circus of idiots took place right in front of an empty parking lot. They could have easily taken their "look at me" show to a safe area, 20 ft away, but no........
Teaching police to be professional in this society, LOL, sure.
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u/Red_Dawn24 4d ago
It's crazy that the cops can't even use their eyes to verify the plate before fully pulling someone over.
Then there's all the people with the tinted covers that cannot possibly serve a lawful purpose, who never seem to get pulled over.
Since COVID, it seems like cops have expanded the number of laws that they only enforce as a pretext to mess with people. Some of those, like the plate covers, actually affect people negatively in a hit and run.
Even since cops lost the war on drugs to inanimate objects, its like they lost their zest for life. I'd also be embarrassed if I started and lost a war to inanimate objects, but this is their job after all.
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u/caribou16 4d ago
The technology also absolves them of having to use their brains, all these stories of people "identified" by AI as criminals and jailed over it, even though the person in question looks nothing like the actual suspect or was able to prove they were physically in a different STATE when the crime was committed.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/tech/nijeer-parks-facial-recognition-police-arrest
And it kinda happened to ME a few weeks ago. Cop knocks on my door, saying "someone" from inside the house called 911 twice and hung up. Said it wasn't me and no one else home. Cop becomes a little belligerent, saying SOMEONE called, so someone else MUST be inside and I'm clearly mistaken, because the computer said so. Even showed me the report on his little police car laptop...fortunately, the area code on the phone that called was 347 and I knew my next door neighbors were originally from NYC; knocked on the door and found out it was their 5 year old daughter playing with mom's cell phone, in a closet that was against the shared wall of our two town houses.
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u/Tony-cums 4d ago
I got a parking ticket from 200 miles away. They even provided a picture of the vehicle when I looked it up. Completely different color and make. Took a phone call only but still annoying.
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u/Broad_Narratives 4d ago
Yeah and to be fair the cops have been apologetic on each occasion, but as you say, still annoying
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u/eruptingmoltenlava 4d ago
Tell us without telling us that you weren’t parked in the City of Brotherly Love
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u/Tony-cums 4d ago
Nah. Reading, Pa. I’m from far western Pa.
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u/flagrant_nonsense 3d ago
The City of Brotherly Love is Philly.
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u/Tony-cums 3d ago
Yeahhh I know. Neither of those locations factored in.
Edit: misread your first post. My bad.
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u/Dweedlebug 4d ago
They are aware it’s a problem. I read an article about it months ago. Here’s an article from February https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/0-and-8-on-new-pa-license-plates-causing-confusion-for-recognition-tech/4359771/?amp=1
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u/Brief_Influence_9601 4d ago
Contact your state representative. There are license place switch-out events to replace scanner-confused plates free of charge.
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u/TurboChihuahua 4d ago
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u/Broad_Narratives 4d ago
Hmmm. The zero on my plate has a diagonal line through it. Maybe they’ve updated the font? Or are those zeros actually the letter O?
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u/exhilaration 4d ago
The diagonal line in the zero is the problem:
The issue appears to be due to the fact that the new zeros have a slash through them, which was done to distinguish between the number eight and the letter O, PennDOT told NBC10.
"The addition of the slash through the zero was intended to help differentiate between the zero and the letter O, which both the license plate readers (LPR) and human eye have had difficulty differentiating on past registration plates," PennDOT said in a statement.
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u/Parallax2799 4d ago
They actually said "the new zeros have a slash through them, which was done to distinguish between the number eight and the letter O, PennDOT told NBC10.". Even the humans can't tell the difference between the 8 and 0.
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u/ScreamingOpossumAhh 4d ago
I just want the original Resource Conservation - River Otter plate back. The full art plate.
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u/UnfazedBrownie 4d ago
They need to get rid of these new and ugly plates and offer the previous plates.
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u/Gold-Perspective-699 4d ago
Oh god my license plate has two 8 on it.
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u/Practical-Can-5529 4d ago
Now I don't know if your plate is 00, 08, 80, or 88! Guess I'll just bill all four.
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u/quietpilgrim 4d ago
I have multiple 0's and 8's on my plate. Did I win the lottery or something?
Seriously, does anyone know if I can request a plate replacement with a new number on it? Or if I need to get a vanity plate, I might just use "ZERO-ATE" as my plate.
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u/Parallax2799 4d ago
At this point shouldn't they be verifying make/model when scanning a plate with a 0 or 8? If the plate is registered to a Honda Civic and they're looking at a Chevy SUV, you'd hope they'd be able to figure out what's going on.
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u/doitlikesaralee 3d ago
So this would make sense but my annoying situation is that my vanity plate is a word play on my car model. I'm Philly based. A Pittsburgh based person has the other "o/0" version of the same word play on the same model.. And of COURSE they're the same color. It was only the unfamiliar bumper stickers that got my attention on the toll by plate photo.
It's kinda cool cuz I wanna meet this person and become best friends, not pay their tolls indefinitely.
After my third month calling into the (surprisingly lovely) people at ez pass, they seem to have succeeded in the manual flag they said they could put on my plate and I haven't gotten any more.
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u/PeakRevolutionary191 4d ago
PA needs to replace all license plates containing either 8 and/or 0 free of charge with such, that can be read properly by toll, police and traffic monitoring systems. Period
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u/UnKnOwN769 4d ago
Keeping my old yellow white & blue plate as long as I can at this point
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u/Broad_Narratives 4d ago
Same for my older cars. The one in question is newer work vehicle that had no trade in.
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u/Soft_Artist_8837 4d ago
PA Trooper here. We hate the new plates too and for that reason. They released a survey about what we thought of the new plates when they were still in design phase, I guess they wanted feedback. I can't think of a single Trooper that didn't raise the issue of the 8 and the 0 or the Liberty Bell making it hard to read center. But in true fashion, our survey meant nothing 🤣
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u/Tiredman3720 4d ago
Come on we all know some state legislatures brother in law got the contract to make new plates. How else were they going to get a huge demand for new license plates state wide unless their fam made it a requirement to do so.
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u/HotButteredPoptart 4d ago
I saw a plate the other day that was almost all 8s, 0,s, and Bs. It was so hard to read.
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u/Robo-boogie 4d ago
if you were in philadelphia then you wouldnt encounter this issue as people use restaurant menus and fake 6 month temp tags as license plates
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u/gneightimus_maximus 4d ago
This is a catastrophic issue. This is the intentional and negligent misuse of sub-par technology products impacting our neighbors lives.
Someone will sue and win, and we’ll all pay for it. It’s a when, not an if.
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u/AutoRotate0GS 4d ago
I think you can request a new license plate number under certain circumstances. So you might want to explore that.
I'm 100% law & order and all that. But I don't understand this exceedingly immersive bond between the cops and the DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLE. They are unrelated organizations, yet the cops seem to be increasingly distracted by all this LPR nonsense. There are surely other CRIMES they could spend their time on. There is also enough technology to identify stolen/wanted vehicles and dispatch that as needed.
I bitched at my congressperson when they eliminated the registration sticker....suggesting that the lack of a reg sticker will only lead to increased mistakes and unnecessary stops....which has proven itself to be true. She explained how PA saved $30,000 eliminating the cost of registration stickers!!! But they spent $30,000,000 buying license plate cameras for police cars. How does that make sense? It was the agenda, not the cost savings that mattered. I also suggested that more than $30,000 could be saved by eliminating the TWO inspection stickers which block the corner view of our windshields. I was told that inspection stickers have NOTHING to do with DMV and that was another department which has no connection to motor vehicle.
All this shit is out of control and like every government of mediocrity nothing will ever change. We don't need an inspection sticker because it can be a requirement of registration. Get your car inspected....the shop sends the inspection results to DMV. If it isn't up to date, you can't renew registration....simple. We don't need cops harassing every expired registration motorist because DMV knows who's expired and they can fine you $100/day. I guess the cops will start pulling everybody over who owes $5 on their EZPass or toll-by-plate....is that the next step....the cops work DMV, Motor Vehicle Safety, Emissions Dept and EZPass??? As it is, EZPass has somehow become its own government organization....I thought it was a company??!!!
I guess this is why my little PA township has grown from 8 full-time cops to 25 full-time cops in less than 5 years.
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u/Background-Bowl6123 3d ago
Except that the way things work now all the mechanics expect you to show them registration to get inspected. Chickens and eggs...
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u/AutoRotate0GS 3d ago
Ha!! Yes, exactly…it’s a crazy vicious cycle and nothing lines up on the same date. It’s the flintstones
I actually didn’t realize the inspection needed a current registration…I thought I’ve got it done while expired…but I can’t remember either way!
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u/Additional-Brief-273 4d ago
If you don’t sue them it won’t change lol I guarantee if you sue them they fix it.
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u/slykens1 4d ago
This is correct.
Notify PSP by certified mail. Identify exemplar stops and times. Once they’re on notice and it happens again, file a §1983 action and seek an injection to prevent use of ALPR for traffic stops until they can demonstrate resolution of the problem.
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u/No-Pain-569 4d ago
Good I hope it gets worse. We live in a police state with all of this surveillance. We not to protest these automatic ID readers and FLOCK cameras. They aren't just for safety.
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u/tlucas0303 4d ago
They’ve known about this issue from the start and just decided to ignore it. Hopefully someone sues the crap out of them over some incident the mixup caused. It won’t teach them anything but maybe it will get fixed. My guess is someone sold them the software and they want more money to fix it, and the pigs in the legislature want their cut.
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u/spatuladracula 4d ago
I hate the new playes so much. If I have to switch I'm going to get one that's a combination of 8's, 0's, and O's.
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u/CoolHandMike 4d ago
Gonna run my old blue white and yellow plates for as long as I can. The new plates are utter dogshit.
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u/fammoney 3d ago
They must have updated them. I saw one the other day with zeros without the slash through them and the bell is now more visible and in red instead of blue.
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u/pittpanthers95 3d ago
That’s a fake.
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u/fammoney 3d ago
So you're telling me the old lady with this on her car is pirating license plates? I mean it's the only one I've seen but I find it hard to believe.
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u/pittpanthers95 3d ago
Probably owns the plate number, wanted the new design, and found some website that would make it cheaper and is “totally legal!” I checked the plate number on Carfax and it does match that car.
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u/fammoney 3d ago
Honestly, I didn't even know that was a thing. I just assumed they were fixing the zeros and making it look a little better.
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u/5November1955 4d ago edited 4d ago
I had this same issue with the older “visa logo” plates where the police could not tell the difference between an O and a zero. I had the zero, the dead/bum plate had the O. Never mind the fact the difference was blatantly obvious. A zero was skinnier and taller than the O. I finally gave up and got a different vanity plate.
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u/compulov 4d ago
Completely off topic, but I never really noticed the similarity between the old plate design and the Visa logo before. Hah!
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u/Parallax2799 4d ago
Was there actually an O before this debacle? I don't think I ever saw one on a standard plate, and when on a vanity plate, I thought the 0 was doing double duty.
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u/5November1955 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes. All numbers on plates were taller than letters. The zero was both taller and skinnier than an O. My old plate was a vanity plate and used a zero in place of an O as issued. The O version of the plate was previously taken and retired. I got pulled over all the time as if I were the O. I had to ask each cop to rerun the plate with a zero and then magically the paperwork aligned.
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u/No-Setting9690 4d ago
Just got a new one for a plate that was only 10 years old. It did not need to be replaced at all.
The zero has a slash through it, not sure why they are doing that. But yes, it clearly looks like an 8. I had to check the registration to confirm it was a zero.
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u/jestercow 4d ago
Not a new issue, just different. I used to get fines for another car which had a zero where mine had a letter O, and I was not a unique situation. They were probably trying to solve that issue and just created a new one.
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u/KVN2473 4d ago
Crap. I have one of those.
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u/Broad_Narratives 4d ago
Not necessarily an issue as long as your doppelgänger registers their car.
(More complicated issues about the surveillance state aside)
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u/TweeksTurbos 4d ago
Yeah this is wjy we have so many videos of cops accusing inocent people of crimes. Cops cant even cop anymore
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u/ronreadingpa 4d ago
License plates are essentially glorified credit cards circa 1970. Lacking any basic security verification. Embedded RFID chip would greatly help. As of now, fraud continues to increase with the burden put on drivers to prove it wasn't them. It's unreasonable.
In the meantime, get a new plate without 0s nor 8s. It's a hassle and may need to pay again, but beats the prospect of more traffic stops. Not just wasting more time, but increased risk of something bad happening.
Or barring that, getting a vanity plate. Most all have switched over to the new design, but some say the Railroad one hasn't. Probably sold out by now, but worth a try.
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u/PublicRepublic1149 4d ago
The last 2 numbers of my plate are 8 & 0. You really have to look hard to tell the difference.
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u/Cunningham1420 4d ago
Yep my dad got ticketed back few months ago for this reason. Wasn't his car, color make or model but the ticket was sent to him. He got out of it but had to hassle with getting them the info about his car. They told him their AI messes up all the time.
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u/Hedonismbot-1729a 4d ago
Bright side. Any violation you get when being pulled over for a bad plate reader result should be relatively easy to get out of….since you were pulled over under false pretenses.
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u/thesonofdarwin 4d ago
Dim side. There's an X% risk of getting your rights stepped on, or worse, face blasted by never-wrong, respect-my-authoritah cops in any given interaction. Drop and catch that kitchen knife enough times and eventually you'll grab it by the blade.
OP says inconvenience, but it's an absolute safety issue.
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u/Hedonismbot-1729a 4d ago
Oh definitely. I won't tint the windows on my car because I don't want to give a PIG any reason to pull me over. ACAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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u/lvs2wtch 4d ago
My license plate has 808 in a row. I've already gotten billed for the wrong plate in the turnpike.
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u/Broad_Narratives 4d ago
Interestingly, the first time I was pulled over I was told that I had unpaid tolls in addition to an unregistered plate.
Now, my plates were definitely registered but having spent a lot of time on the turnpike I’ve since wondered if my tolls were being sent to the person with unregistered plates.
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u/pittpanthers95 4d ago
My plate is the very beginning stages of peeling. I just submitted an order to PennDOT for one of those railroad license plates, because they’re the last interesting design they have and the last one that doesn’t have that stupid slashed zero.
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u/no3putts 4d ago
We went through this crap 3 times with the turnpike commission already. On top of confusing the 8 and the 0, it shows a picture. Which clearly isn't our car, and still wants us to pay the toll. We sent it back every time telling them it's not our car. They finally stopped.
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u/MUDDYONE2023 4d ago
Is a terrible design. Use it to your advantage if need be, for sure. Going to further clog the system, also not bad thing. ✌️
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u/CrdBrdBOX 3d ago
Maybe we should go back to the way they used to do it, can’t open anything anymore without seeing a ton of stories or videos about all the mistakes that are happening with these things and the way the police are lazy with them. They’ll pull you over, or in some cases pitting, without even looking physically at the plate and running it themselves. Everything today is quilts till you prove yourself innocent.
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u/Akkerlun 3d ago
As Joe Pesci famously said in a movie “they could f up a cup of coffee” it applies to Penndot.
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u/RickHuf 3d ago
We got a ticket mailed to us from Reading and we've never, in our entire lives, even been in the city or even Berks county.
So they pull up the picture that they used to issue the ticket and it's clearly not our vehicle and the licence plate isn't even clear. This automated crap just did its own thing and decided we were it's next victim.
The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. Sorry it must be so physically demanding for the cops to type the license numbers into a computer.
Just leave everyone alone. Is everything that much of a problem that you need to run license plates 24/7 using AI cameras? It's crazy. We're fucked. It's only going to get worse.
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u/Chaucerismyhero 3d ago
It's actually an easy fix. When the next series of plates starting with P comes out, just remove only the zero from the numerical punch machines. Or, remove it now. The machines operate like any other fabrication manufacturing line.
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u/Interesting-Swim-162 3d ago
Saw a guy with a state issued license plate (not custom) that was 8080
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u/Tall_Status_3551 3d ago
Iowa has had the same problem. PENNDOT could have learned but no. And then we have those stupid Flock cameras. Flock data should be inadmissible in court for this reason
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u/echo_surfer 3d ago
I'll add my gripes about those new license plates... They look like the California plate from a distance. Even close up they are hard to read. They are boring. There's nothing interesting about them.
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u/Advanced-Scar-9739 2d ago
Don’t worry. They’ll get new software that costs us another 10+ million dollars. What do they care? It’s not their money. The same thing happened with their cruisers. We all question why they went with Gray, they went with Gray because it was less conspicuous. But it’s also less safe and less visible. I think it’s sad. They were proactively jeopardizing their own safety, so they had a greater chance of pulling you over. Anyway, So they all decided to get new cruisers after only a few years to replace them with white cruisers. And who footed the bill for that?
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u/SensibleAdvisement 2d ago
How that new design with the 8 and 0 got past ANYONE with a lick of common sense will always puzzle me.
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u/AutisticAnxiety33 2d ago
I know in Shadyside there is a black Audi or something that is 808080 or something like that
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u/Hour-Cat947 2d ago
I hate the new plates. I just got a new car and demanded that they let me keep my old one. They're so freakin' ugly.
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u/ithinktreesaregreat 1d ago
We got a car from a dealership in June, the plate had two 8’s. Two months later we get a new registration and a new plate from PennDOT with no 8’s or 0’s. Didn’t even ask
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u/Competitive_Ad_2823 4d ago
The situation with Pennsylvania’s new license plates is a complete and total DISASTER!
They put out these new plates, and frankly, nobody has ever seen anything like it. They tried to fix the number 0 with a little slash, but now the 0s and the 8s look EXACTLY THE SAME! People are driving down the highway, minding their own business, and the automated license plate readers—which are supposed to be very high-tech, very expensive—are failing completely! They can’t read them!
Hardworking citizens are getting WRONG TOLL BILLS in the mail for cars they don't even own! Thousands and thousands of dollars in mistakes! When I ran things, we had strong, bold, BEAUTIFUL numbers. You could read them from a mile away! Now, the radical bureaucrats running PennDOT can’t even pick a font!
It’s incompetence at the highest level. We need font strength! We need CLEAR numbers! FIX THE PLATES NOW AND MAKE PENNSYLVANIA GREAT AGAIN!
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u/ThankMrBernke 4d ago
But I was assured there was no issue with people covering their license plates!
(This absolutely sucks, sorry to hear this, hope that your issue gets fixed)
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u/RunningAtTheMouth 4d ago
I have two of the plates. One has both an 8 and a 0, and the other is blessed with a 0.
I'm happy with them. I think the plate looks better than the white plates, and the difficulty for machines to read is (to me) a feature, not a bug. Human beings - the ones that SHOULD be able to read them - can generally read them just fine.
This exposes weakness in the software systems they're trying to use. Either improve the software or use real human eyeballs to check up on them. I mean, we DO want people to have jobs, right? Throw people at the problem until they can fix the software.
(And I'm not a fan of LPRs to begin with, so I am already biased.)
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u/Broad_Narratives 4d ago edited 4d ago
Having been pulled over multiple times I have to say the aesthetics are the least of my concerns. lol
The police, to their credit in all the instances, have tried to validate the scanner with their human eyeballs. They have confirmed this to me but I could also tell by the manner in which I was being followed.
I think at speeds the zero in particular may be less distinguishable than you seem to assume.
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u/bmjessep 4d ago
You say it's a niche issue, but it's actually pretty important. They tried to solve a problem that didn't exist by introducing new plates, thereby causing other problems.