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Fabricating or altering license plates can help drivers become untraceable in the system, allowing them to get away with otherwise law-breaking activities. With over 14,000 cameras in the UK’s automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system, drivers attempting to evade detection, whether for illegal activities or to get away with reckless driving, have been using special plates — also known as ghost plates — that make registration numbers unreadable to these AI-powered data-collecting systems.
U.K. law enforcement has been fighting ghost plates for a while now — and a new camera could be the answer. A new camera from ANPR tech firm MAV Systems can allegedly detect and identify ghost plates by using AI to analyze the plates’ infrared and color images. Tests have been positive, with U.K. police detecting anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand ghost plates a day in some heavily trafficked areas. Some of these tests have gone on for nearly two years as of September 2026, suggesting the system works.
How do ghost plates work?
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At a glance, ghost plates look very much like your everyday license plates. They even have the correct details for the vehicle they’re on, so they appear legal to passing police officers. However, ghost plates use reflective plastic that makes them nearly impossible for ANPR cameras to read.
These ghost plates aren’t some black-market product, either. U.K. drivers can purchase them from many of the 30,000-plus businesses registered with the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). That means drivers are buying legally supplied plates instead of getting them from a shady back-alley operation. In its report, the BBC found that some of these businesses openly offered ghost plates to help evade cameras without even requiring proof of ID or vehicle registration. To combat this, U.K. police want tighter regulation for license plate issuers — right now, all you need to do is fill out a quick form and pay a fee.
Ghost plates aren’t unique to the U.K., of course. In New York City, for example, drivers have used ghost plates to avoid highway tolls. They’re also not the only way drivers try to evade cameras; other methods include illegal plate flippers that obscure plates from police and cameras.