Matt Churchill

Stopped this mornign for the first time with my plate, below........

by the lovely Mr Plod. Given a ticket to get it changed back to legal spaced and to remove the illegal Scooby Doo, then get an MOT garage to stamp ticket and send into local cop station, within 14 days. Oh and they took a nice pic for the DVLA.

What I don't get is, since when did the Scooby Doo become illegal? and where the f**k do the DVLA get off flogging plates which clearly say things for a lot of money, to then turn around and say that you can't space them illegally?!?!?

One thing which the copper did say was "Are you the guy who was in court recently because of his plate?" - apparently another local Impreza, with a similar plate. Needless to say the answer was No, but makes you wonder what the significance was? - was it that the guy correctly challenged the law, or would they have shot me on site!

Anyone on here challenged the law on this, coz I am sure there must be something of a case there?

Also, what risk do I run if I change it then immediately get something similar again?

Any and all opinions/views welcome

Matt

Neil Smalley

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...quirements.htm

*Sonic*

Was about to say that when you purchase the plate, and whilst they are reading the terms & conditions of the verbal legal & binding contract, they do mention about the illegal spacing & misuse of fonts etc, and once you say agree, you are then bound by those terms

and AFAIK its always been illegal to mess about with fonts & spacing etc, but since 1st January there has been a major clampdown

As far as reg plates spelling something, some do, Ya lot dont unless you mess about with them

Yours is a good plate tho, and unfortunatly is illegally spaced, but I have seen far far worse, so blatantly obvious too

the worst one was C10 CKY but with the thickest font you can find for the letter C 0 CKY and the 1 was barely a hairs width

Edited to say, im unsure when the scooby doo bit became illegal, im not 100% sure still about the Euro symbol, all plates are supposed to carry the BS kitemark too, and the dealers Postcode




[Edited by *Sonic* - 2/28/2003 7:25:38 PM]

mark@wrx

If the scooby doo is illegal, what about the european stars sign we see everywhere? Or the union jacks? IMHO the only illegal thing about your plate is the spacing of the letters. I had to change my front one recently cos it was about 2/3 the size of the original. As for the bit about kitemarks and postcodes I think that the GT Grafix ones do have them on, just in very small lettering!

ozzy

It's simple, the lettering isn't spaced properly and the Scooby pic isn't acceptable now either. Only the EU symbol and your countries flag is valid. They did try to ban the country flags too, but that got knocked back.

Bad luck, but I reckon it was the spacing that got you pulled. They would probably ignore plates with the Scooby logo if the lettering/spacing was bog standard.

Stefan

[Edited by ozzy - 2/28/2003 8:05:03 PM]

Freak

I am also from Gloucester mate.....
They seem to take such huge crimes as number plates incredibly seriously round here...had no end of grief for plates in the past (not on present car i might add) for spacing on some plates, symbols on others, fonts on others...
Currently on my bimmer i have a mis spaced plate on the front (spaed like: A1AB C- i would post a pic of mine but not going to for fear of the 5-0 seeing it on here) but standard on the rear, and its been ok for the 4 months ive owned this car now...touch wood.Font is legal, no symbols on the edge, and correct margins top and bottom- just altered spacing for two of the letters. Petty really.

If they took a pic of your plate they will send to the dvla- its a certain number of warnings and they CAN remove the plate, although i know of no instances where this has actually happened (and i know plenty of people who have been warned, and photographed etc)
They have never taken a pic of mine- just pink 14 day slip and a £30 fine.
Which i will continue to pay...If they remove my plate i will buy another one and continue to mis space it.

Where abouts did you get pulled over can i ask?

p.s- your plate looks real good.You might get away with it if you have a standard plate on the back (although i agree it is very boring)

[Edited by Freak - 2/28/2003 8:11:50 PM]

[Edited by Freak - 2/28/2003 8:12:51 PM]

mike16v

Sorry to hear that.

I have my plates miss-spaced front & back, but when I get the paperwork back from the DVLA I'll be getting a replacement set made for MoT. I'll probably leave the back one on after I get stopped for the 1st time, but have been ok for the past 2 or 3 weeks that the plates have been on the car. I have mine spaced like A BC123A

If my plates get revoked, I'll not buy another one cos I'll have no doubt hung myself as these are the most personalised plates I would ever get a chance of owning!

Cheers
M ROBBIE

Scratch

iTrader: (1)

Looking at the DVLA at the page posted above, and following a link from it you get :

"Can other symbols (e.g. national flag, football team crest) be used on number plates?

The Government announced on 28 December 2001 the intention to permit the display of national flags and symbols on vehicle number plates.When the regulations are amended they will provide for the voluntary display of the Union flag, Scottish Saltire, Cross of St George and Red Dragon. Football team crests etc are not allowed."

Guess that answers the question about the scooby. Character spacing is a given, and on that fact alone your plate would be illegal.

DeerHunter

i have mine spaced as D4VE H .... (not quite my plate but u get the idea) the E and H are 2 spaces apart. Touching wood.. never been stopped in 2 years!

I cant find anyone who will replace them mis-spaced for my pending sti 8 and the plate is useless non mis-spaced!! everyone has to have postcode on them now..

so i said : before they go through the computer printer put a little piece of tape over the area where it prints, then b4 puting the backing on remove tape and presto - no postcode!

still trying, plan to have E and H with 1 space then the plate is so marginally wrong they hopefully wont bother? (yeh right!)

Harps WRX

Could anyone confirm the rumours I'm starting to hear everywhere that grey imports are allowed smaller number plates on the front. Is probably a load of tosh, some of the crap muppets post on here, but if not would be interested to know. Isn't so much for the tart appeal but it can't hurt to get more air through the airdam, and have never really fancied having a sticker type number plate fitted to bumper or bonnet (isn't that also illegal now?).

Cheers

swansea scooby doo

Hi , I was stopped for miss spaced plate. 1 letter 10mm out of line. I dont know if you are aware that if your plate is removed you cant put another on the car. This means that the car can not be used on the road again so is a major problem as you can't even sell the car for road use.There is no way you can buy another plate for the car and drive it legally again. I have been told this from a friend who works in this dept in DVLA.
Tony

DeerHunter

so your saying if your plate gets revoked you loose the car - i dont think so - i heard it went back to old plate or was given an age related plate.....

Eldar

Dear oh dear. There are shedloads of rules & regulations about *exactly* what your numberplate should look like. If there wasn't, they wouldn't be able to catch you in the congestion charge cameras, which will be comint to every town in the near future.

Its all about money, and how much they can extract from you. Unless you change your plate to a nice compliant one, you'll just be a nice little revenue stream for Mr. Brown.

Its also good to know the police have got their finger on attacking and defeating crime & criminals. Oh yes ....

Colin

DeerHunter

eldar exactly right!

Da Booga

AFAIK if a number plate was to be revoked the car would be issued with a non-changeable Q reg. This serves the purposes of stopping the illegal reg number being used again and may also devalue the car. As has been stated above though i've never heard of anyone having there reg number revoked.

HTH,

Gareth

negri

" quote "
Hi , I was stopped for miss spaced plate. 1 letter 10mm out of line. I dont know if you are aware that if your plate is removed you cant put another on the car. This means that the car can not be used on the road again so is a major problem as you can't even sell the car for road use.There is no way you can buy another plate for the car and drive it legally again. I have been told this from a friend who works in this dept in DVLA.
Tony


i dont think this is true at all , what would happen is the plate would be taken off you and your car would go back to having a normal plate of what year it is . you end up with no private number plate thats all .

DeerHunter

gareth thatks for the mail, will give u a buzz in the next week or 2, dont pick the car up until then (dealer may do it if i dont sign and give him the cash )

Da Booga

Ok mate, no probs

jjones

imports with the square plates are allowed to use the motorcycle size letters and spacing. these are slightly (but not a lot) smaller.

StickyMicky

hmmm
i ran a nova with doctored plates and used to get stopped all the time

the i brought a proper personalised reg for msyelf last year M111 CKV and its spaced correctly, and it has no ghosting or daft tacky lettering allong the bottom

and it looks like M111 CKY even tho the letters havet even been touched, and ive been followed sooo many times, and im dieing for them to pull me over for it, and they havnet

one day..... one day maybe.....
actualy one day soon i might gett he dam thing on my new scooby, still waiting for the log book to cme back from the dvla in my name so i can transfere the plate from my vectra

just found out i have to tax the vectra to take the plate of it!! it sitting there on the drive waiting to be sold as soon as the plates taken off, you cant win!!

Matt Churchill

Thanks for all the info guys, will be getting them re-done shortly. To what who knows ;-)

Alex Creasey

jjones - Don't be so sure on the square number plate. Not picking at what your saying, My import had the square number plate on the rear and was fine for nearly two years, until one morning on the way up to Donnington plod decided it was illegal in pretty much every respect; spacing, letter size, letter thickness, etc. He even got his little ruler out to tell me the spacing was out by nearly 2mm (!!!!!) in places. This of course may have changed now with the plates for imports being allowed to be different.
Now being the hardened criminal that I am, this was the second time I had been caught (first time full size plate was deemed unreadable because it was on the front lip spoiler). I was told that after being caught three times my plate would be revoked by the DVLA and a Q plate would be issued (effectively making car worth less (?)).
I now run a stick on front plate on the bonnet with a japanese flag in the left corner, and a larger than standard rear plate with standard lettering and have had no problems since.
Cheers.

[Edited by Alex Creasey - 3/4/2003 9:47:22 AM]