[Svip]

In Denmark, you can buy a vanity plate (ønskenummerplade) for 8'000 DKK (needs renewal every 8 years), and it can be between 2 and 7 characters long; but the best part is that they permit all Danish letters, including Æ, Ø and Å. One could likely write a script quickly to check these platforms for short combinations, such as ØÅ, which appears to be available.

[neilv]

ØØ7

Don't forget that the cost is not only the bureaucratic fee; you also have to buy a vintage Aston Martin or Lotus, to display the plate.

[josteink]

While clever, as a Scandinavian I regret to inform you that I would read that as: Uh Uh Seven, not (double) Oh Seven ;)

[cobbzilla]

a money-saver! uh uh seven belongs on a vintage Ford Pinto!

[neilv]

But the tourists visiting Europe will be impressed.

[reactordev]

Shouldn’t be a problem with all that medieval money lying around. /s

Does a kit car count? You can build a Lotus for around the cost of a Honda civic. Like a Lotus 7.

[MisterTea]

Money? You mean you don't just go to Q and procure one?

[reactordev]

I guess you could get the tax payers to pay for it.

[mdasen]

I'm imagining someone driving in England and the police having no way to input those letters into their system.

I wonder if the Danish system would prevent ÆØÅ and AEOA from both being registered. Would the Danish system Match "ÆØÅ" if someone input "AEOA"? There are unicode normalization rules, but I wonder if systems would be built to handle that. If you're Danish, you'd just use those letters so it wouldn't be a useful feature. If you're English, you wouldn't often encounter those letters so it wouldn't be a useful feature.

[alexfoo]

> I'm imagining someone driving in England and the police having no way to input those letters into their system.

I would assume the UK has worked out a way of dealing with this having had plenty of years of foreign plates being driven around the country.

Any Danish license plate driven in the UK will almost certainly have to a be an EU style plate with the blue band on the left with the "DK" country code. If someone needs to send a fine to the registered owner of this plate I'd guess they'd be handing over the camera footage/images to a contact in the relevant country and letting them confirm what the exact plate is.

(There may be some weird exemptions for old classic/vintage cars that can continue to be driven on their original number plates, in which case you really don't know who to contact.)

The UK is very strict on license plates. I don't think there's any valid reason for driving a car without some form of a license plate on display (cars being driven on trade plates placed in the front/rear windscreens are the closest thing I can think of). I'd expect the UK Police to pull over any car that didn't have plates on it if they spotted it. It's certainly considered very suspicious in the UK if a car is missing either of its plates.

There are plenty of examples of normal ANPR cameras failing to capture plates properly. Or even sillier examples like this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-58959930

This story got referenced by the associated Government body here: https://videosurveillance.blog.gov.uk/2021/10/27/the-camera-...

[monerozcash]

>I would assume the UK has worked out a way of dealing with this having had plenty of years of foreign plates being driven around the country.

Based on my experience, the UK approach is to not even bother and try and collect fines from owners of foreign registered vehicles. They do sell them to some private company that has been sending me scary letters for 10 years soon.

[Svip]

My understanding is that most countries just don't bother; I once drove around North America on Danish plates; since European plates are much wider than North American style plates, none of their cameras could scan my plates; so camera-only toll roads were essentially free for me. I consider that it happens so rarely anyway, that they don't bother.

Similarly, I've been flashed for speeding in France, which does have cameras adjusted to my plates' size, but they also didn't bother sending a ticket. Germany - on the other hand - will send you a ticket, but since they allow Ö, Ü, etc. on their plates, their system can probably handle Æ, Ø and Å as well.

Edit: Obviously, they don't bother to a degree; severe infractions will obviously make local law enforcement do something, but it's a rather manual process. Most countries are signatures to a treaty, that recognises other countries' plates.

[culi]

So what happens when ÁÀÂÅÅÀÄ run a red light?

[ilya_m]

A fine for faking a license plate, may be? ÁÀÂÀÄ are not in the Danish alphabet.

[culi]

Apologies. I'm not familiar with the alphabet. I just looked up Danish unicode and it showed those characters. I'll stick with 0OO0O00 as my license plate