Car Race Systems

Theft of number plates is a cause for concern as many stolen plates are used for serious criminal activities. Theft resistant number plates are designed to be difficult to remove, or at least more difficult than normal plates.

There are a number of reasons why number plates are stolen. Stolen plates are put on vehicles when drivers don’t want to be traced under certain circumstances, such as speeding, illegal parking, not paying congestion charges, parking tickets or speeding fines. Worse still, sometimes number plates are often used to disguise a stolen vehicle.

The DVLA works with plate manufacturers and others to develop standards for theft resistant plates, and aims to reduce the number of car owners who face motoring related fines for something they didn’t do, and also to prevent the serious problem of vehicle cloning. The DVLA standard states that theft resistant plates need to withstand at least three minutes of tampering, and even if they are removed, they are supposed to break into at least four different pieces, which makes them useless for attachment to a different vehicle.

It can be difficult to find a number plate printer that can manufacture a theft resistant plate, as these are not yet widely available, but the DVLA has a list of number plate printers that are able to print the regulated anti-theft plates. Plates that resist tampering are more expensive than standard plates; be prepared to pay up to double the price of a standard number plate.