Twerps with hats on back to front and no front number plates

I'm told that having no front number plate is a road traffic offence with a maximum penalty of £1000. I have a front number plate on my caterham 7 so how come so many other cars are zooming about without front number plates and getting away with it? Not just noisy Novas with some young twerp with his cap on back to front, but some vastly expensive "super" ? cars as well.

Please discuss and we'll get on to the insurance implications if anyone has knowledge of that.

H.

I cannot remember when I last saw a car without a front number plate, now I will be looking out for them.

And I also have a number-plate on the front of my Caterham 7. It is slightly cut down to make it narrower as only has 5 characters, but the spacing is still correct.

Colin

Edited By Colin Heseltine on 16/08/2020 18:02:28

Haven’t had a front number plate on my Trident for 42 years and it’s never had one in its 46 year life

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 16/08/2020 18:16:13

It was a great day when we could take off the front number plates from our motorcycles and bin them.

I have seen an Alfa Romeo with the front number plate in the middle.

There’s quite a few supercars running around South Yorkshire bereft of the front no plate

For many long years you don't need one on a motorbike. In my day they were known as pedestrian slicers as they stuck up like a knife from the top of your front mudguard

Edited By duncan webster on 16/08/2020 19:33:06

Round here vehicles without number plates are agricultural. Couple of years ago passed a convoy of 3 tractors towing massive trailers loaded sky high with hay bales. Some very unhappy men were having their details taken by the police. I've often wondered how many offences. Unregistered, no insurance, unlicensed drivers (one looked about 14), no MoT, pink diesel, excessive trailer weight, lights, could have been the full monty.

I have some sympathy with farmers. Agricultural vehicles normally operate on private land and are only seen briefly on public roads as necessary to move between neighbouring farms. Seems OTT to have them taxed etc for the odd short journey. And they're bottom of my list of annoying road-users.

What sort of thing annoys you? I denounce men wearing hats of any type whilst driving. My dad started hitting things as soon as he wore one, and now I own a flat cap.

Dave

Agri vehicles road registered have to have a rear plate and allowed between your own farms/fields or a limited radius from there. Zero annual road tax just the initial 50-odd quid to get it registered. If those guys were travelling significant distances to sell stuff elsewhere using their farm tractors with dodgy loads and red then they deserved to be done.
Both my quadbike and small tractor are road registered just so I can take them off to the agri engineer when there's a problem i can't solve rather than getting them trailered.

pgk

Most of my pre 60 bikes have stick up front number plates and some have alloy plates bolted to the side of the mudguard, does anyone have any written evidence as to fatalities or serious injuries caused by the number plate.

Lots of people come to me and say "those plates were banned as dangerous" but they weren't banned, it was the requirement to a display a front plate was removed.

Colin

I expect the simple reason for no front plate is to avoid being caught by speed cameras. One has time to slow if passing a camera which takes a pic of the rear, but not so easy if the camera is taking photos of speeding oncoming traffic.

I expect the offence, if they are caught, of no registration plate is a fixed penalty fine - and might possibly not mean points on license? Possibly even only needing to be fixed within five days to avoid a fine?

Edited By Pete White on 16/08/2020 23:02:57

Prior to September 2001 motor cycle front plates are optional and after that date only a rear should be displayed. I think the often displayed sticker type on a Caterham/ Lotus 7 bonnet is a bit iffy to meet the forward facing requirements. I assume the Alfa’s with the plate on one side do meet the regs as this is how they are built. The legal rear plate for a motorcycle is an ugly item especially on a sports bike but giving the plod an excuse to stop you is just asking for trouble. In my youth I was stopped many times but a courteous exchange and assuring the officer I would fix my rear light the next day often worked well, still collected enough offences to get banned twice though. The howling triple was a major contributor to my transgressions but the VF750 never got me stopped once although 30mph faster at any given time. Much quieter though.

Mike

Dead right there, Mike. At one period I heard one biker joining the main road at about the same time on working days. The exhaust note could be heard from a long way off and it was clear that the machine was exceeding the speed limit as it ‘screamed’ along the bypass. It would only need a complaint - and plod would have easily got him with hair-dryer speed gun from one of the bridges along the bypass as he was speeding excessively, as regular as clockwork, on that stretch (at least).

People don't really bother because there's so much of it

Like government corruption, It's in the genes, part of our darwinist legacy

Around here number plates on farm tractors and trailers are a very rear sight, as are working lights.

Police dont seem to bother about them. Dont know how one count identify them if they hit your car, or indeed yourself.. I have NEVER seen any of them being pulled in.

Along with that, very few cars have a full set of working lights. I dont understand how this can be, since they must go for test sometime.. Since I got my van in 2006, I have replaced two rear stop lights [which were pointed out to me by my nabour ], but if one of my headlights was blown, I would surely notice it. Again, the police dont bother about it.

Meeting one of these jokers on a dark morning, the question is which light is working ?

I recall a bobby demanding to know where was the number plate on my pre-war Austin Seven and my pointing out that the previous owner had sprayed it on to the honeycomb radiator matrix; clearly not compliant but I got away with it at the time.

This was long before baseball style caps, however worn, became fashionable.

Same thing applies to all these personalised number plates, never ever seen old bill pull them over. One cocky little s**t I worked for bragged to me that all he had to do when his personalised plated Ford Sierra Cosworth went in for MOT was to drop the tester twenty quid to supposedly fit the correct number plates, test the vehicle and put the illegally spaced personalised plates back on.

Don't get me going about number plates. LEDs which fail for no known reason were bad enough.

Tim

A few comments about agricultural vehicles.

The idea of there being a limit of a few miles is a new one to me: my grandson & his father run an agricultural contracting business and travel many miles between jobs, 50 miles being for one of them. And they run on on red diesel.

Another problem, which basic Plod doesn't necessarily know about, is that provided all tractors are fully registered and owned by the firm, and all trailers are also fully owned by the firm, then any tractor can tow any trailer even if the registration details between tractor & trailer do not match. Son-in-law did indeed get pulled up for that and despite explaining to basic Plod, he was summonsed, or what ever basic Plod does, only for the Sergeant to confirm that son-in-law was right & basic Plod wrong. This could possibly be what was happening in the report above.

Agewise, the youngest age for tractor driving on the road is actually 16, but there are size limits involved which does rather preclude a 14 year old, except that I seem to recall being told that you could do it to cross a road if said road split the farm. Apparently, once 17, they can indeed drive a fully loaded 31T outfit on a Class B licence. And let's face it, some fresh faced 17 year olds can indeed look much younger than 17.

In respect of motorbike front number plates, yes, they were indeed known as slicers, however some bikes, I had one, had two front number plates, one on each side of the front mudguard whilst others had a single plate mounted across the front forks and facing forward.

Of course, there are motorists, touristy types, who faced with a large tractor driven by a camparitive youngster try to take advantage. My grandson was faced one such type who tried to claim that grandson had hit him with his big balloon tyres, that was until he was told that had the wheels been turning, they would have left circular marks on the car body, not the straight lines that indicated that the car driver had indeed tried to force his way past whilst grandson was stationaary.

Cheers,

Peter G. Shaw