I fixed Irish car registration plate formatting. Discuss.

colm_mcm

Plumbing forum here
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1320

Dick Turnip

Sparkey84 wrote: »

so jack and bill were in the pub one night (names changed)
each to their own but i kinda think the year on the reg plate is a nasty sales ploy. a very effective one mind.

It may be a sales ploy, but you really don't need to fall for it.

Sparkey84

colm_mcm wrote: »

Plumbing forum here
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1320

i might have used humour, and one could view it as stirring ****e, but i stand by the point at the end of the story, the irish reg plate system will never be "fixed" while the year is in it so predominantly

Buddy Bubs

athlone573 wrote: »

The UK semesters start around Easter and Halloween (somebody else can confirm the exact months)

Up to end of Feb 18 gets 67 plate I believe.

So
07 is March 17 to Aug 17
67 is Sept 17 to Feb 18
08 is March 18 to Aug 18....and so on

magicbastarder

why do dublin plates say 'baile atha cliath' rather than atha cliath?
i had assumed that baile atha cliath was dublin city and atha cliath was dublin.

Sparkey84

Dick Turnip wrote: »

It may be a sales ploy, but you really don't need to fall for it.

you are 100% correct, and personally i don't, quite the opposite in fact, i tend to buy a 6yo car for a fraction of what i think it is truly worth

a 6yo car in Australia ironically would cost much more because cars hold value so much better without the "ink enforced depreciation" we have here in ireland.

GM228

Buddy Bubs wrote: »

Up to end of Feb 18 gets 67 plate I believe.

So
07 is March 17 to Aug 17
67 is Sept 17 to Feb 18
08 is March 18 to Aug 18....and so on

17 is March 17 to Aug 17
67 is Sept 17 to Feb 18
18 is March 18 to Aug 18....and so on

mickdw

Dick Turnip wrote: »

What are you on about?

1. Why will next year's be any worse?
2. Why does it need to roll off the tongue?
3. How hard is it to decipher the current format really?! It takes perhaps a milisecond longer than the last format.

1 Because it just a series of 1s and 2s - 211 212 221 222 - i dont have a problem with identifying it but we had a laugh with a older person here the other night. Completely confused.

2 it needs to roll off the tongue for ease of memory to be useful in identifying plate in case of crime. As an example 12 D 78911. The 12 D is automatically rem3mbered so its just a matter of recalling the numbers at the end.
211 D 78911 might just be that little more complex that it takes that extra milli second and memory to cause the loss of the end digits.
3 as above - its just not as clear as the 2 digit system.

Jim_Hodge

mickdw wrote: »

1 Because it just a series of 1s and 2s - 211 212 221 222 - i dont have a problem with identifying it but we had a laugh with a older person here the other night. Completely confused.

2 it needs to roll off the tongue for ease of memory to be useful in identifying plate in case of crime. As an example 12 D 78911. The 12 D is automatically rem3mbered so its just a matter of recalling the numbers at the end.
211 D 78911 might just be that little more complex that it takes that extra milli second and memory to cause the loss of the end digits.
3 as above - its just not as clear as the 2 digit system.

It couldn't be easier Two One One, Two One Two, Two Two One etc.

It's easy to remember.

Best system we have ever had. A glance at the year, note the county, and concentrate on the final digits.

I preferred the pre 2013 two digit but it's hardly mind numbing to read or work out the current numbering.

mickdw

colm_mcm wrote: »

How the hell is that better than what we have now!

It’s the year with either 1 or 2 after it, it’s not abstract algebra.

The uk system is actually very smart in using letters for the serial part of the plate. 26 options for each of 3 spaces versus our numerical option.
They can get 17000 unique plates out of 3 letters. We can only get 999. Priceless for ease of memory.
As i said earlier the uk system started out pretty nice - the 01/51 back in 2001 was clear. Doesnt really work with the 60 and 70 plates.

colm_mcm

The uk system will obviously run into trouble in 2051 as well. We’ll be fine til 2113.

Mimon

magicbastarder wrote: »

why do dublin plates say 'baile atha cliath' rather than atha cliath?
i had assumed that baile atha cliath was dublin city and atha cliath was dublin.

The county is named after the city and the city is called Bailie Atha Cliath in Irish.

mickdw

Jim_Hodge wrote: »

It counts be easier Two One One, Two One Two, Two Two One etc.

It's easy to remember.

Best system we have ever had. A glance at the year, note the county, and concentrate on the final digits.

I preferred the pre 2013 two digit but it's hardly mind numbing to read or work out the current numbering.

Its not about being difficult, it just doesnt hop out at you as easily.
To make it worse, there are also people who are completely confused now - a mate of mine got a 201 van there a month ago and the amount of people who said its brand new surprised me. Thats just people refusing to educate themselves but still.

AndrewJRenko

zilog_jones wrote: »

There, fixed it. No need for the year to be on the plate at all.

Black text on a dark red background is very poor design - need much more contrast between the text and the background.

OP - any chance you could fix all the Donegal lads going round with the italic plates?

GeneHunt

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Black text on a dark red background is very poor design - need much more contrast between the text and the background.

OP - any chance you could fix all the Donegal lads going round with the italic plates?

And yellow plates!!!

Natterjack from Kerry

irelandjnr wrote: »

Having the third digit I found adds unnecessary confusion. Here's my design to get our old simpler, nicer plates back while providing even more context for potential car buyers.

I like it. It is simpler, and no one is interested in which half of the year you bought the car.
The whole point of the year on the number plate system, when it was brought in, was so that we could leave others in no doubt as to how young our car was, and so how superior we were to those who drove older ones. A lot of people dont know a lot about car models beyond the badge, much less when a particular model came out or was retired. Some cars in the past, if well kept, had metallic paint, and had new hub caps fitted could pass for new enough, even if 10 years old. Which gave no chance to those of us rich enough to distinguish ourselves from that sort of carry on.

The year on the plate was unarguable - I am better than you. It works. Fundamentally the current3 digit system is simple, but at a glance its not quite as obvious to everyone as the 2 digit one was, what the pecking order is. Which was is the whole point in the first place.

So, OP, good one. Connoisseurs can look at the detail and go , ooh, it might be a 'June', but he is only going to get 6 months out of it as a this years car. Couldnt afford to change in January obviously like I could. Ha! Loser.

80sDiesel

Thought I was the only one having this issue!

Weird right. Why does

202 D

seem newer than

211 D

Think by brain falsely fills in the gaps as 2020 and 2011.

S1M1L4RLY, Y0UR M1ND 15 R34D1NG 7H15 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17.

feargantae

magicbastarder wrote: »

why do dublin plates say 'baile atha cliath' rather than atha cliath?

The county name in a reg plate refers to one of the 26 traditional counties of the Republic of Ireland, no distinction is made between county or city.

magicbastarder wrote: »

i had assumed that baile atha cliath was dublin city and atha cliath was dublin.

Baile Átha Cliath or BÁC is Dublin in general.

Contae Bhaile Átha Cliath (Co. BhÁC) or Contae Átha Cliath is Dublin County.

Cathair Bhaile Átha Cliath or Cathair Átha Cliath is Dublin City.

phelimb

80sDiesel wrote: »

Thought I was the only one having this issue!

Weird right. Why does

202 D

seem newer than

211 D

Think by brain falsely fills in the gaps as 2020 and 2011.

S1M1L4RLY, Y0UR M1ND 15 R34D1NG 7H15 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17.

Yep - was able to read that fine

I liked the Portugal style plates where they clearly identified the year and month (at the end) along with a bunch of numbers/letters : 11-YY-22 20/05 to indicate May 2020 for example. I think that's been discontinued this year for some reason though...

_Kaiser_

Just go back to the pre-2013 system... logical, easy to read and very clean. Agree with the points about that the 20x/21x plates are harder to read intuitively

This xx1/xx2 nonsense to pander to the "industry" should never have been approved. As for the suggestion of going back to the pre-90s system, that's even worse.

zilog_jones

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Black text on a dark red background is very poor design - need much more contrast between the text and the background.

OP - any chance you could fix all the Donegal lads going round with the italic plates?

I was just trying to make it obvious I was talking about the pre-'87 system, the red plates aren't necessary.

I couldn't care less about having a year on the number plate. I'll buy a car of an age that suits me, and keep it for as long as I want. I bought a car in NI (their plates have no age identifier) and plenty of people buy used cars from Japan (also no age identifier) - not having a date on the reg is a non-issue for those in the used car market, it's not that hard to find out the age of the car.

People say the current (or maybe moreso pre-2013) system is easy to remember - but people are generally only remembering the year and county and not the serial which limits its usefulness. The serial numbers are too long in some cases, especially Dublin. One to three numbers and three letters would be easier to remember than the current 3 numbers, 1-2 letters, 1-6 numbers.

The location identifier becomes pointless after the original owner sells the car. The pre-'87 system did have less obvious county codes, but we could just do away with that completely which would make more letter combinations easily available.

New Zealand (a country with similar population to Ireland) does fine with three letters and three numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_New_Zealand
They just follow a sequence so you can determine age if you wanted (like the pre-'87 plates here), but it's just down to what letters get used in a year. They also allow for personalised plates (up to 6 characters), and special plate designs: https://www.kiwiplates.nz/plate-designs/

CoBo55

zilog_jones wrote: »

I was just trying to make it obvious I was talking about the pre-'87 system, the red plates aren't necessary.

I couldn't care less about having a year on the number plate. I'll buy a car of an age that suits me, and keep it for as long as I want. I bought a car in NI (their plates have no age identifier) and plenty of people buy used cars from Japan (also no age identifier) - not having a date on the reg is a non-issue for those in the used car market, it's not that hard to find out the age of the car.

People say the current (or maybe moreso pre-2013) system is easy to remember - but people are generally only remembering the year and county and not the serial which limits its usefulness. The serial numbers are too long in some cases, especially Dublin. One to three numbers and three letters would be easier to remember than the current 3 numbers, 1-2 letters, 1-6 numbers.

The location identifier becomes pointless after the original owner sells the car. The pre-'87 system did have less obvious county codes, but we could just do away with that completely which would make more letter combinations easily available.

New Zealand (a country with similar population to Ireland) does fine with three letters and three numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_New_Zealand
They just follow a sequence so you can determine age if you wanted (like the pre-'87 plates here), but it's just down to what letters get used in a year. They also allow for personalised plates (up to 6 characters), and special plate designs: https://www.kiwiplates.nz/plate-designs/

The main advantage with the N.Z system is that it's a centralised system, no letters for counties. The fatal flaw in our old system was some counties running out of letters and others having thousands left over when the system was wound up in 86.

My 2 proposals are, 22 D AAA, next being 22 D AAB etc similar to the UK system.
Second proposal is to revamp the old system, Dublin was RI etc.on the old system, start with ARI 1000 the extra digit would give it much more longevity.

zilog_jones

CoBo55 wrote: »

The main advantage with the N.Z system is that it's a centralised system, no letters for counties. The fatal flaw in our old system was some counties running out of letters and others having thousands left over when the system was wound up in 86.

The main problem with the old system was that it was designed not to clash with any other UK registrations, as it pre-dated the formation of the Free State. So letter combinations were severely limited as the county codes had to contain Z or I, and also not be the same as those used in NI (which followed, and still follow the same I/Z rules).

loyatemu

scrap the county code, it's written on the plate anyway nowadays.

YY-LL-NNN
e.g
21-ND-456

gives you 676000 possible combinations each year, so you could even remove or reserve some of the letter combinations for certain purposes, like GS for the guards, ZV for imported classics etc.

at the very least there should be a uniform format.

TaurenDruid

mickdw wrote: »

Ya since 2020, the plates are a mess. 131 / 132 ................. 191/192 are fine.

201, 202
211, 212
221, 222


Its nuts - as above, its going to get even worst when we get next years plate. It needs a new plan - Motor industry will insist on a july plate so going back to one plate wont happen.
It also needs to roll off the tongue so something like 22A, 22B wont work ....22A D 10123 doesnt work.

Eh... it doesn't need to "roll off the tongue", does it? And not much difference at all between 221-MH-2935 and 22C-MH-2935 or C22-MH-2935.

colm_mcm

We could look at different shape and colour plates.
So blue triangle could be Dublin and maroon circle could be Galway, red rhombus for Cork etc. We could maybe group provinces by shape and counties by colour.

AndrewJRenko

colm_mcm wrote: »

We could look at different shape and colour plates.
So blue triangle could be Dublin and maroon circle could be Galway, red rhombus for Cork etc. We could maybe group provinces by shape and counties by colour.

About 10% of Irish males are red-green colour deficient. We shouldn't be relying solely on colour to convey information.

Dr. Steve Brule

This topic came up here before, not sure if it was brought up by the OP of this thread.

Prior to 2013, we had the most sensible number plate system in the world. Year, County, Sequence. Then the 131/132 system came which personally, I've not been a fan of.

I can't see why changing it again would make any sense, bar moving it back to the pre-2013 system.

I'd be more in favour of getting rid of those two or three pieces of paper off windscreens tbh.

CoBo55

zilog_jones wrote: »

The main problem with the old system was that it was designed not to clash with any other UK registrations, as it pre-dated the formation of the Free State. So letter combinations were severely limited as the county codes had to contain Z or I, and also not be the same as those used in NI (which followed, and still follow the same I/Z rules).

Had we just added the extra number to the plate giving 9999 per letter instead of 999 we’d still be using that system today. After over a hundred years the NI system is coming to a close and they’re going to reverse them and away they go again, seems very logical to me that we could do the same here a 7 character plate would look so much better than the 10 character abominations that are being issued now. Would be even better to use 3 or 4 letters instead of numbers if we were to stick with the year on the plate. The system as it is looks terrible with far to many characters on the plate.

CiniO

CoBo55 wrote: »

Had we just added the extra number to the plate giving 9999 per letter instead of 999 we’d still be using that system today. After over a hundred years the NI system is coming to a close and they’re going to reverse them and away they go again, seems very logical to me that we could do the same here a 7 character plate would look so much better than the 10 character abominations that are being issued now. Would be even better to use 3 or 4 letters instead of numbers if we were to stick with the year on the plate. The system as it is looks terrible with far to many characters on the plate.

That's what I was saying on this forum for a long time.
UK which has over 65 million population can manage with 7 charactes numberplates, and Ireland with less than 5 million popuation uses mostly 8 or 9 or even possibly 10 charactes on a plate.

IMO country size of Ireland, could easily do with 6 characters on number plate.
3 letters and 3 numbers give over 17.5 million combinations which is plenty for a country with just over 2 million vehicles.