How do you make a product more secure when it needs to be constantly on show? One answer might be to build it so it breaks if it’s moved.
Stolen number plates are used in a range of vehicle crimes, including the sale of stolen cars, avoidance of congestion, toll or parking charges and speeding. Number plate theft is a big problem according to police forces, which estimate that around 40,000 plates were stolen from vehicles in 2007. Criminals can remove plates from one car and fix them to another stolen car of the same model before it’s sold on and people committing speeding crimes, ignoring road charges or stealing petrol can use stolen plates to
avoid detection.
To combat this problem, the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) asked number plate manufacturers to design new plates with anti- theft measures built in. The agency set rigorous standards for these new designs – plates will only be certified as anti-theft products if they cannot be removed from a vehicle within three minutes or if removal renders them unusable.
The first company to create a DVLA-approved anti-theft plate was Hills Numberplates, which launched its SecurePlate product in 2006. ‘The DVLA asked companies to design something to prevent car cloning, which is seen as a growing crime problem. ‘We designed SecurePlate so that it breaks into a minimum of four pieces if it is removed from the car,’ explains Hills Numberplates Marketing Manager Louise Sambrook.
The patented number plate is certified by SoldSecure and approved by Secured by Design, a national crime prevention initiative from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). More than 300 dealers sell SecurePlate across the country.
However, anti-theft plates are still an optional upgrade for motorists and new cars are not required to have them fitted as standard. And while ACPO’s Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service has called for all cars to have tamper-proof plates, a spokeswoman for the DVLA says the effectiveness of the plates needs to be proven: ‘We aim to demonstrate in practice that the standard is both achievable and effective before we consider making it compulsory. We are also prepared to modify the standard in the light of experience and a voluntary standard gives us greater flexibility to do this.’
The SecurePlate concept
The SecurePlate idea is to build in lines of weakness at different points along the plate, which cause it to snap when pulled from its fixings and adhesive. This snapping also stretches and damages a transparent top sheet, so it is obvious that it has been tampered with, leaving it useless to the thief.