Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by spragl 135 days ago
Another fun fact: German registration plates use a font for which it is difficult to change one digit to another, for example by adding a bit of tape. The font is called FE-Schrift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift
2 comments

Interesting. I’ve heard that in the states, some police department plate lookup software will treat similar shapes the same. So if you search “B5-004” it will also match BS004, B5O04, etc
But they left S, X, and Z rotationally symmetric, so if you choose a non-palindrome vanity plate with only those characters, you can mount it upside-down and fool plate-readers.
But at least in Germany the plates always start with some letters and end in numbers. So mounting it upside down can't result in a valid plate.
Custom ("vanity") plates aren't allowed in Germany?