London's infamous congestion charge is having an unintended if not unpredictable consequence: a rise in the number of stolen or counterfeit license plates. The Wall Street Journal reports that unscrupulous motorists attach someone else's "number plate" to their car to avoid the $16 daily charge for driving in downtown London. When a scofflaw's car gets caught on camera with a plate that doesn't match those who have paid the fee, the genuine owner of the license plate gets a citation in the mail. (As you can imagine the paperwork involved in contesting the fine/rectifying the identity theft is listed in the OED under both "enervating" and "labyrinthine.") England's Automotive Association estimates that up to 300 cars with illegal plates amble about in the congestion charge zone every day. While some companies are selling anti-theft devices to cut the number of stolen plates, that doesn't stop the counterfeiting. All you have to do is order a set of "decorative plates" from several companies on the internet with whatever license number you desire.
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Unintended and pretty much unstoppable. All the solutions in the article are useless against “car cloning”
London has amazingly incentivized the stealing of license numbers (not even the actual plates!) by the average joe crook.
awesome.
canfood:
It draws in revenue, doesn’t it?
They get what they deserve for continuing to vote these people back in, and then watch how they pile regulation and fine on top of regulations and fines. Thank God they are doing it over there, provides a good argument against doing the same in the US.
No doubt Q-branch is expanding production of the revolving license plate holder last seen on Bond’s DB-5 (http://www.supercars.net/cars/2085.html).
Good one, browner!
Now what we need is a good economist to figure the REAL cost of the congestion charge, and who is REALLY paying, and who is REALLY benefitting.
My guess is that the average brit is getting shafted while government workers and some politically connected types are getting a small benefit. Terribly inefficient. The next question will likely be – Would it be better if the government workers and the politicians and their cronies just stole the money from the treasury?
A certain amount of cheating is inevitable in any complex system. For years in the US, we’ve had able drivers sporting handicapped plates so they can park in reserved spaces, magnetic tape hackers riding the subways for free and people registering their cars in neighboring states to avoid personal property tax.
Vlad the Impaler could put a stop to it – just pike the offenders heads along the main thoroughfares.
The U.K. isn’t far off from each car having a transponder so that congestion, emissions per distance, parking tickets, speeding tickets and any other traffic offense can be automatically billed to the owner of the vehicle on top of paying about $2000 per gallon of fuel.
Stay tuned, now that Tony Blair has a lot of free time, I hear they’re working on a way to divide his cosmic consciousness to get him inside everyone’s car at the same time.
When you raise the cost of something by a substantial amount, unintended consequences almost always follow.
The inability to pay and the desire to evade payment will always provoke some creativity and ingenuity to get around it. If you have ever clambered up a Dutch staircase, for example, you can thank the tax authorities for having inspired it. (Buildings were taxed by the frontage, which encouraged them to building narrow buildings with steep staircases to maximize the usable interior space.) Governments need to take this creativity element into account when developing these plans, and not assume that people respond to price increases solely by reducing consumption.
Having just encountered the iPass toll system in Chicago this weekend, I realize how naive I have been. A politician’s delight. Combine with photo radar and we’re well on our way to big bro being in total control.
the problem with the London congestion charge as opposed to toll roads (the other system that widely uses license plate recognition) is that you have no choice.
sure you could steal plates and drive the toll roads on someone else’s dime…or you could take the frontage road or take a side road (at least in texas)
Not so in London…pay up or GTFO seems to be the order of the day.
also the pricing seems steep in relation to the value of what the average person gets out of it.
all that adds up to a recipe for widespread legal disobedience kind of like mp3 filesharing.
although it’s doubtful that “car cloning” will ever reach such a level…but then again…
Here In the San Francisco bay area, many use the Fas Trak payment system for bridge tolls. That could easily be expanded to monitor driving habits and charge accordingly modified to allow its use for parking in SF’s city garages.
Here in the People’s Republic of New Jersey (as well as in comrade state the Democratic People’s Republic of New York), we have EZ-Pass transponders for tolls roads and bridges. I resisted it until I needed to cross the Philadelphia bridges on a weekly basis at rush hour, 5 minutes with EZ Pass versus 30 minutes without. The best part is that we are charged a $1 monthly ‘maintenence fee’ for the transponders.
So, in both essence and actuality, I am paying a tax so that I can pay a tax.
In what I am sure is completely unrelated news. a quarter million young, high-income urban/surburban professionals have left the garden state since 2002, replaced by low income immigrants/low income elderly. Tax free Delaware sounds better and better all the time.
I noticed that the states in Mexico (or at least the northern states) issue window stickers along with license plates that have the license number. So you (or a cop) can tell at a glance if the plates belong to that car.
It doesn’t stop the dedicated criminal who also creates fake window stickers for his fake license plates. But it prevents people from casually “borrowing” another car’s plates.
I would not be surprised if London will require transponders to be installed in cars for this reason.
This happens a lot over here. On an even larger scale, people are fixing false number plates to their cars and driving off from petrol (gas) stations without paying.