Sheila Prior
Director, Regions III & IV, Member Support

I spent the last couple of days with AAMVA’s Automated License Plate Reader Working Group who met in Phoenix to edit a draft version of a best practices document.  The group includes a myriad of experts from motor vehicle agencies, law enforcement entities, license plate vendors, toll authorities and ALPR manufacturers, each of whom brought their unique perspective to the table.  It was fascinating to learn a little bit about how ALPRs work. It’s much more complicated than I had ever thought about.  They first have to detect the vehicle, then locate the plate image, then separate the background from the license plate number, extract the number, determine the jurisdiction, and finally hand-off the number to back end systems.  All of this requires a bunch of engineering expertise and is without a doubt fairly complicated.  The fact that an ALPR can read hundreds of plate numbers in a fairly short timeframe makes this a technology that will continue to increase in use, by law enforcement and others.  We learned about some of the challenges ALPRs face including “noisy” backgrounds, poorly designed fonts, weather conditions, encroaching symbols and designs, and much more.  Stacked characters and the use of non-alphanumerics and determining whether they are or are not, part of the official license plate number poses additional challenges.  Some unofficial math shows there are more than 6,000 different license plate designs in the U.S. and Canada.  And it’s a well known fact that the number of specialty plates increases exponentially every year.  Until this week, I never gave a thought to the fact that every time a new plate design is issued, the ALPR manufacturers must go through their machinations to enable the technology to function with the new plate.  It is these concerns that resulted in the formation of the working group to develop best practices for the design and manufacture of license plates. The results of their efforts will be available within the next year and after watching the group at work for a couple of days, I’ve no doubt the final product will be something the jurisdictions will want to pay attention to.