Soundex is still out there. If you live in Illinois, Florida, or Wisconsin your drivers license number is a soundex hash of your name combined with your birthday.
TIL! Fascinating! Of course my first thought was.. “what about hash collisions?” And naturally each state has selected their own resolution. In Illinois you can apparently be detained for a while due to a hash collision with a suspect.. plate numbers aren’t unique apparently!?
License plate numbers are unique. Two somewhat similar names can resolve to the same Drivers License number, but in those (extremely rare) cases it's just a matter of checking the actual name against the warrant.