Road Wars - Number Plate Spray

[welsh blackbird]

There is a new series of Road Wars running on Sky One. This week the police were following a car with a number plate that the officers could read, but which their on-board camera could not - it just looked blank.

The voice over said that the driver had sprayed his number plate with something that made it invisible to speed cameras, which was against the law!

Does this stuff actually work?

[docjan]

Weird for a few reasons, one of which was that I thought it was all a myth and snake oil anyway...
Secondly cameras are at an angle unlike police car cameras and are totally different, i.e have extremely short exposure times and flashes.... cant imagine which seeing it on a camera or not would indicate why another type of camera elsewhere couldnt see it or human eyes could see it etc etc.

[supraman2954]

welsh blackbird said:

There is a new series of Road Wars running on Sky One. This week the police were following a car with a number plate that the officers could read, but which their on-board camera could not - it just looked blank.

Was it a bright blank, or a dark blank?

Was the in car camera a normal video type, or was it an ANPR type camera?

The latter type works exclusively in the infra red band, which is invisible to you mere humans so usage of a transparent IR rejection filter would have the seen effect (trying to be careful with what I post).

If the camera was of the former type and it had an illuminator very close to it, then use of a retro type reflector covering the VRM (can you get this in a spray?) would probably be enough to overexpose the imager.

[toni896]

saw that one - it looked like when they blur the face of someone - so def not dark.

could it be the Bib cam couldn't see it but the TV cam could ? - otherwise why did it look blurred ?