To make our roads safer, we need a crackdown on dodgy number plates
4 min read
I had never heard of a ghost plate until about a month ago. I was standing on Kenrick Way – a busy A-road in my constituency – with our local police and crime commissioner (PCC) and the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander.
We were talking about the nightmare car races that cause hell for residents on Friday and Saturday nights, when as many as 50 cars converge on the area to race up and down this long straight road.
The PCC, Simon Foster, and local roads policing lead explained that it is increasingly hard to catch these dangerous drivers due to the rise in ghost plates. You only need to go on TikTok or Instagram and search the term to find thousands of hits.
So, what is a ghost plate? They look totally normal to the human eye, but they are unreadable to the cameras that make up the Automatic Number Plate Recognition network (ANPR) keeping our roads safe.
Ghost plates are rendered invisible by a reflective coating applied on top of the number plate. This means people using ghost plates can use our roads however they like and go undetected. They are making our roads less safe, and we need to start clamping down on them.
That’s why I stood up in Parliament this week to try and toughen up the law so that people who use these illegal plates face proper consequences. Illegal ghost plates are far too easy and cheap to get hold of. And as it stands, the penalties for using or supplying them are far too lenient.
The current punishment for using a ghost plate is £100. Given that a driver might use a ghost plate to evade a speeding fine, drive illegally in a bus lane, or much worse, it’s likely worth the financial risk. The incentives for using a dodgy number plate are all wrong, and that is having huge consequences for our road safety.
In the West Midlands 1,000 people are killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. Across the UK it’s 30,000 people. We are living through a road safety crisis.
Illegal ghost plates are far too easy and cheap to get hold of
This is something that I’ve become a passionate campaigner about, especially after working with the charity RoadPeace, who helped my constituents when they suffered terrible losses. I’ve been hearing incredibly tragic stories from them about family members who were killed by dangerous drivers.
In hit and runs, speeding offences, or even in cases where our roads are being used for organised crime, we might rely on ANPR to be able to track down those cars again if they’ve fled the scene of the crime. But if they are using a ghost plate, it’s nigh on impossible. People are getting away with awful crimes, and never facing the consequences.
How can we stop this happening? I brought this issue to Parliament for the very first time to try and secure a toughening up of the law.
I’m asking for the fine to be upped from £100 to £1,000 and for six penalty points to be given as a punishment. I think the potential options of vehicle seizure and licence disqualification should be investigated, to reflect how dangerous using a ghost plate is, and how they are making all our roads less safe.
The police and local authorities are now getting wise to these plates, and they are investing in new technology to catch them. But with this enhanced technology, the punishments need to be tougher.
I’m really glad that this Labour government has decided to bring forward a new road safety strategy later this year, and I think that addressing the penalties around the use and supply of ghost plates to tackle our road safety crisis is long overdue.
The drivers using these ghost plates have gone under the radar for too long but now they’ve been rumbled – and it’s time to crack down on them.
Sarah Coombes is the Labour MP for West Bromwich
