Private Number Plates Made Easy To Remember

Hoping to make it easier for crime victims and witnesses to recall personalised number plate numbers, Massachusetts may begin handing out plates with fewer characters and a symbol in place of one digit.

150 L personalised number plates

The proposal is the brainchild of Gary Richard, a Bay State businessman and inventor. After reading about several high-profile kidnappings, Richard dedicated himself to using his time and skills to prevent future abductions. What does that have to do with license number plates?

“I set about trying to analyze the dynamics of an abduction,” he said. “The common denominator is a private vehicle, and how do you identify a vehicle? The license plate.”

Unfortunately, young children and anyone with limited literacy often cannot recognize some letters and numbers, especially if they go by in a flash. Hell — most adults can barely remember their own plate numbers. Armed with studies that show symbols can ingrain themselves in the minds of toddlers for more than a week, Richard set to work.

“If such license plates are indeed easier to memorize or recognize, this could help, for example, a victim relay a license plate to law enforcement after an incident,” said Cynthia Lum, a professor of criminology and director of George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. “Memorizing a plate is difficult in a stressful situation.”

No one’s empirically tested the effectiveness of the new plates, but the math shows that fewer numbers on a license plate makes even a partially remembered registration more valuable. According to Richard, just the style and color of the car with a symbol alone would narrow it down to one of 360 cars, and more information would further focus the search.

“If you said it was a blue SUV and ‘Diamond 5,’ it’s one of about 12 cars,” he said.

The ability to quickly narrow a list of suspected vehicles helps law enforcement track down the owner of a vehicle. Although the owner of the vehicle may have had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime, it is still an important lead.

“By connecting with the owner, the police can determine who had the vehicle at a given time, or whether the car or license plate had been stolen,” Lum said.

Because there’s no easy way to input a star or diamond on a computer keyboard (unless you’re using a Commodore 64), EZ-ID uses a small two-digit code to indicate its symbol and where it’s located in the character stream. For instance, a diamond in the second position would be entered as “D2.” Vanity and affinity plates would stay the same, so Bostonians could keep their coveted low-number or Red Sox plates, and the addition of symbols would open up a slew of personalized plates people may be willing to pay for.