Vancouver, Canada – March 28, 2005 — “The concept is a simple one. Combine the visual identification present in our current license plates with electronic identification matching them to the vehicle,” says Patrick McCleery, Chairman of EVI Management (www.evin.ca) in Vancouver. “Add in design features that prevent the plates from being transferable and you have e-Plate”.
The e-Plate is a recent innovation from Hills Numberplates (www.hillsnumberplates.com), Britain’s largest supplier of license plates with over 75 years of experience.
“Hills recognized that standard plate designs are vulnerable to theft and fraud. Their solution was to create a plate that fractures irreparably along etched lines when removed from the vehicle”, says McCleery.
Current roadside cameras rely on line of sight and optical character recognition to record traffic violations and congestion charges. Weather conditions and other factors reduce the ability of these cameras to accurately determine the registered owner of the vehicle.
Each e-Plate contains a radio frequency identification device or RFID. Upon registration, the e-Plate is permanently programmed with the 17 alphanumeric characters that make up a vehicle identification number. That same code is visible at the lower corner of the windshield and elsewhere on the frame of any vehicle.
A network of compact readers located throughout an urban setting record the time of day that an e-Plate has passed within 100 metres of an intersection, bridge or tunnel. Neither traffic volume nor velocity impairs the readers from recognizing each unique e-Plate.
“Where a provincial jurisdiction chooses e-Plates over traditional passive license plates, government use of that data will be subject to their privacy policies,” notes McCleery. “This is not an Orwellian system that tracks your daily purchases or your choice of websites and television programs. Only the presence of a registered vehicle on a public roadway as it passes a known coordinate is recorded.”
From that data, municipalities will improve traffic management and enforcement of moving violations. Local police forces will quickly locate and recover stolen vehicles as they travel across the city.
Public transit routes will be customized to accommodate commuter patterns with a new degree of accuracy.
The e-Plate is currently undergoing trials with Transport for London (www.tfl.gov.uk) for use in congestion charging and traffic management.
About EVI Management Group
Founded in 2005, EVI is a privately held company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
