South Africa is getting more and more into a more standardised and modern system of vehicle registration, and the latest rule changes herald this trend… For many years, because of variations in license plates from province to province, it was very hard to enforce them with loopholes for fraud.
Now, however, authorities are focusing on national re-design that will enable vehicles to be more secure in their identification. Such changes seek to work more effectively towards road safety, contemporaneously reducing the abuse of cloning of cars to aid the police in tracking stolen: unlicensed vehicles.
What the New Plates Will Look Like
One of the most significant alterations is the introduction of unified plate design that will be used nationwide, instead of individual provinces printing their style. New plates will feature improved reflective material, with digital identifiers built onto the face of the plate.
The aim is to allow cameras and enforcement equipment to read plates more accurately under all conditions, especially at night or when they are being monitored from a great distance. Also included in the new plate’s design is security features, whose reason is to make these plates extremely difficult to copy.
When should vehicle owners request plate change?
It will not happen immediately. Some phase-in time is expected that will give vehicle owners time to replace their number plates upon renewing their licenses or when buying new vehicles.
On the reuse of existing vehicles, there is no hard deadline established yet, but their days with the old plates seem numbered. Upon the sale or interdiction of a car, again, the new plates are expected to take over. The license plates will be phased out from the system inch by inch.
Compliance
With the introduction of the new plates on the roads, legislation will move a step forward toward enforcement. Enforcement bodies will have technology for digital plate reading, which will aid immediate backend verification of whether a particular number plate is licensed or cloned and connected to a vehicle in the national database.
Non-standard plates or plates with poor quality contrived by unscrupulous entities are liable to be penalized. The aim will be to relieve congestion in the criminal underworld as well as in certain other security threats, such as those posed by cloned number plates.