Electronic Number Plates A Possibility
Reg Plates ArticleElectronic Number Plates A Possibility

New electronic number plates will be issued starting next month, about three months later than the Cayman Islands government initially planned.
The Department of Vehicle and Drivers’ Licensing announced Monday that some 2,400 temporary vehicle tags that have been issued in recent months will all be replaced in May. The temporary tags were issued in anticipation of the upcoming effort to switch to the electronic number plate devices.
After May, the department will begin replacing the older license plates and vehicle registrations free of charge when drivers bring in their vehicles for the typical registration renewal.
The new registration plates, which have the numbers stamped at the Department of Vehicle and Drivers’ Licensing facility, are “tamper proof” – they cannot be removed for use on other vehicles.
In addition to the new license plates, corresponding vehicle registration coupons must be installed inside the windscreen. There are specific instructions for doing this, which the department said will be provided with the new license plates.
“I thank the public for their patience,” DVDL Director David Dixon said Monday, adding that the license plate vendor, Tonnjes, has been in Cayman recently, managing the setup of the new licensing system.
The electronic vehicle licensing system has generated significant controversy since its implementation was announced in the Legislative Assembly last summer. The new system cost $1.5 million, according to the vehicles department.
How close a series of letters or numbers are to a real name of word: if the match quality is high (and the numbers and letters are very convincing in making a popular word), the value of the registration plate will be higher. This means that a match like 5IMON, for the name Simon, will be worth a lot more than a more obscure set of letters and numbers that are not as convincing a match, such as S17 MMM for the name Sam.
The style of the plate: this means establishing if it is a new-style plate, an older-style format or if it is dateless or Irish, for instance. Other options are that it is a prefix-style plate or a suffix-style plate. New-style number plates, which have been produced since 2001, tend to be the least valuable because they are a bit less appealing to some collectors, plus the rule about not having plates that are newer than your car can also come into play, putting people off from buying a newer-style plate for their older car. Prefix-style number plates, which were in production between 1983 and 2001 can be more popular as more vehicles are entitled to have those licence numbers, and they may have fewer characters in total. Suffix-style plates, issued from 1963 to 1983 are relatively rare, which means they can attract higher prices than prefix-style plates and newer designs. Dateless number plates, also known as cherished number plates, were produced between 1903 and 1963 and are nearly always the most valuable number plate configurations; they have fewer digits and their dateless nature means that people can hide the age of their car. Irish number plates are similar to dateless number plates, especially because they don’t have a year identifier. They also tend to be cheaper than other types of vehicle registration plates.
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