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Canada Transportation

Ontario's New License Plates Have A Problem: You Can't Read Them (npr.org) 117

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Ontario's newly-designed license plates just hit a speedbump. Call it Plate-gate. From a report: A little background: The Canadian province's new design was unveiled by the provincial government -- led by center-right Ontario Premier Doug Ford -- last year. Almost immediately, people started comparing the plate design unfavorably to a box of Q-tips. The plates also had a new slogan -- "A Place to Grow" -- which drew the ire of some critics, who preferred the previous "Yours to Discover," which the plates had sported since 1982. Then there was the palette: Observers noticed that the new plates had the same blue color scheme as Ford's Progressive Conservative Party. But the real problems began once the plates went into use this month. "Has anyone else noticed that the newly designed @ONgov license plates are totally unreadable from distance at night?" tweeted videojournalist Andrew Collins on Friday. "Could be an issue for [Toronto] police forces in the future." A Twitter user who describes himself as a police sergeant in Kingston, Ont., tweeted another photo with the same complaint the next day: "Did anyone consult with police before designing and manufacturing the new Ontario licence plates? They're virtually unreadable at night."
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Ontario's New License Plates Have A Problem: You Can't Read Them More

Ontario's New License Plates Have A Problem: You Can't Read Them

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  • Doug Ford is still haunting them.

  • In some countries, that would be illegal (Score:5, Funny)

    by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @10:37AM (#59742862)

    In some countries having a reflective layer like that, preventing camera or human observation of the number plate from a distance, would be illegal.

    In Ontario, it's the law!

    • In some countries having a reflective layer like that, preventing camera or human observation of the number plate from a distance, would be illegal.

      I'm still wanting some sort of infrared LED assembly to surround my plate, and blind out cameras.

      Would be perfectly human eye readable, but no cameras.

      That would still be perfectly legal in a lot of places I believe.

    • Why is this a problem for anybody except the police?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sconeu ( 64226 )

        Why is this a problem for anybody except the police?

        Some asshole hit and runs me. I *WANT* the cops to find the SOB.

        • I think you're missing my point. It is hilarious that in some countries making your number plate hard to read is illegal, while in Ontario it is the law to use the Government-supplied plates that are hard to read.

      • Because the ability to identify a driver is not limited to police.

        Got a hit and run? Hope you read the license plate.
        Someone stole something from your front yard at 2am? Hope the neighbour read the license plate*.

        *This actually happened to me, but the thing they stole was something I was about to pay to have disposed so while I was glad the neighbour spotted it, recorded it and told me I did not file a police report.

      • Agreed, this is only a problem for cops.

  • Free use of the 407 ert at night? (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @10:40AM (#59742870)

    Free use of the 407 ert at night?

  • Young, dynamic, driven, clueless. Happens again and again when you get rid of the people with actual experience.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 )
      Or just trying to fix what isn't broken in general.

      On the other hand, things have to be going pretty well in Canada if the major fuckup that has everyone up in arms is over license plates. Do you think anyone in Syria, Venezuela, or the Ukraine has time to give a damn about license plates? I doubt anyone there has even stopped to ponder them at all. I'm hopeful that we'll see an even better future where the complaints will be strictly limited to bad kerning on the license plates.

      • The world is falling apart, but we can solace ourselves in the fact our government issued license plates are better then the last holdout of the free world.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        No it has not. This is just the latest in a bunch of stupid Ontario government decisions, both from this government and the last. I have kids in the school system here, and the whole system is a disaster. The last government decided to integrate special needs kids into the classroom, and did provide some funding for extra employees to handle these kids in the classroom. The new government gets in, cuts the new funding but doesn't roll back the decision on integrating special needs kids into the classroo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Its more that the conservative party under Doug Ford makes rash and arbitrary decisions without bothering to talk to experts.

      • The biggest trick pulled is when public servants specifically choose not to do their jobs so the current political party will look bad. I see it's influence daily in my job.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )
          They paid an external firm $90,000 to design it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            Seriously? A license plate? They don't spend that much to design a new kid's breakfast cereal box, where the box is the principle thing causing people to buy it.

            Let me guess, was the owner of the design firm related to someone important?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luthair ( 847766 )
              Probably not a coincidence that if it were 100k they would have needed to opened it to bidding.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by cusco ( 717999 )

                Sounds like the Pentagon's bidding process. All contracts of more than $100 million automatically get audited, so at least once a year you'll see a flurry of 4-12 contracts given for something nebulous like "engineering services", all of them just under $100 million. One will go to an established firm, all the rest will go to companies that are completely off the map, most don't even have a web site and some don't even have a phone line. If you can find the articles of incorporation and look up the addre

            • General consensus (by people who can distinguish colors) is that the new and "improved" plate [twitter.com] is done up in the colors of Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. [wikipedia.org]
              Also, commercial plates will carry premier Doug Ford's [ipolitics.ca] election slogan: 'open for business.'" [msn.com]

              It's another case of a piss-head gammon fatass using public funds for personal and political gain and promotion.
              And in the case of Ford - it's just another case... [wikipedia.org]

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Cederic ( 9623 )

              $90k is nothing. Shit, you can spend $90k just doing the research to see whether the public like the new design.

              Which to be fair, they apparently skipped.

          • They paid an external firm $90,000 to design it.

            Damn that is cheap.. They got what they paid for.

            Designing good license plates requires font-, material- and graphical-design and extensive testing. Why on earth are individual states doing it on their own anyway?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I don't remember things ever being much better than this. Except for the part about being younger myself. That rocked.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I don't remember things ever being much better than this. Except for the part about being younger myself. That rocked.

        Hehehehehe.

    • I wish they would use the wide Euro style plates over here as they are much easier to read at a distance.

    • Or some old guys who were in the decision making process, Who just picked the cheapest option, and pushed to get it done.

      I have found Young Designers are often still under the idea of making something perfect, they will spend too much time on details that isn't going to offer the best benefit for the buck.

      Old designers near retirement, just don't care anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Back in the early '00s, Texas had a new license plate design with busy art behind the plate number. It was not easy to read (still way better than these Ontario plates!), and they were just putting in automatic camera-based billing for toll roads. Not too long after that they stopped that letter combination series and started another with a white background where the plate number goes. They've been on that series ever since; I think it's over halfway to Z by now.

  • Doug Ford is supposed to be the smartest brother (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @10:43AM (#59742882) Homepage

    So, we've done Rob, that didn't go well.

    Doug is literally the worst premier ever.

    Let's see if Randy steps up - he's been at least smart enough to stay out of the public spotlight (if you ignore the allegations he arranged with Rob a prison beat down of their sister's ex-boyfriend).

    The Fords prove that Canada has it's white-trash Conservative element, just like the rest of the world.

    • Oh man, The Ford's aren't the first proof of this... but honestly it's not exclusively a conservative problem. Canada has just time and time again proven it's just like the rest of the world. It feels like this more recently, or maybe I've just been paying attention more recently.

      The story about the plates though!? I just find that funny... I wish they did something like this to registration stickers during the time they decided to stop sending out "renew your registration" letters to save a buck, and p

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      Doug is literally the worst premier ever.

      Guess you missed the 15 years of Liberal party rule under McGuinty and Wynne. Everything from giving us the highest sovereign debt in the world, to the gas plant scandal where they illegally destroyed documents, to creating the conditions of driving the electricity price up from peak@0.085kWh to peak@0.185kWh in less than a decade. To the lol fuck you rural plebs, we're gonna put that garbage dump in your backyard.

      I enjoyed the rest of your bigotry on display.

  • Has anyone else noticed that the newly designed @ONgov license plates are totally unreadable from distance at night

    That's ok, because when someone commits a hit-and-run and can't be identified by the plates (because, you know, the very thing that identifies the owner is fucking invisible now), Doug Ford and his party members can sit in for the culprit, since they've made them impossible to identify (and they must've been willing to do this, since they're the ones that insisted on those plates!).

    • Has anyone else noticed that the newly designed @ONgov license plates are totally unreadable from distance at night

      That's ok, because when someone commits a hit-and-run and can't be identified by the plates (because, you know, the very thing that identifies the owner is fucking invisible now), Doug Ford and his party members can sit in for the culprit, since they've made them impossible to identify (and they must've been willing to do this, since they're the ones that insisted on those plates!).

      If give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they are NOT total idiots. That probably means they either already make up the bulk of hit and runs, or plan to do many hit and runs..

      Alternatively they just fucking morons. But assuming the truth is not nearly as fun.

  • Kerning (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Halmos ( 464196 )

    You'd think that since these aren't embossed out of metal, and instead simply printed that some consideration for kerning would have been had...

    https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/02/18/gettyimages-1136345920_wide-1cd2b2a33704e9e50782212eca32a15005a7aa22-s800-c85.jpg

  • A place to grow... what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @11:11AM (#59742984) Journal
    Also, can we please stop calling every scandal or screwup "whatever-gate"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      I'm with you (not her, get it?). Anyways, Adding "gate" to every "scandal" is quite irritating and really makes no sense at all. Was the Watergate scandal about water? No. It was spying on a political party to gain an advantage. Although I believe the person who broke the case participated in pornographic films...
    • which in context ties in with the right wing economic policies espoused by Doug Ford. Out of context it's harmless, but in context it's likely to be thinly veiled propaganda. Subby was hinting at it so we'd talk about it among ourselves.

      Not that there aren't better fights to be fought (Doug Ford has indirectly suggested more than once privatizing Canada's healthcare system, being careful to use dog whistles). US Drug and Insurance companies are looking abroad for new profit centers. Also it's a bit of

  • Used reflective paint on it all (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @11:12AM (#59742990) Journal

    The problem is they used reflective paint for the blue background colors AND reflective paint for the numbers. They should use reflective paint for one or the other, but not both. The older license plates did not use reflective paint on the numbers (which were black, providing even more contrast).

    It has nothing to do with the design or color scheme. They just used the wrong paint additives.
    https://twitter.com/ColinDMell... [twitter.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      They were black on trucks, blue on most vehicles and green on EVs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      No embossing either. So, all-reflective, no embossing, and less contrast between text and background than the old ones.

    • Re:Used reflective paint on it all (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki@gmail.cBALDWINom minus author> on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @11:54AM (#59743166) Homepage

      This is a lot to do with it. But here's the reason why this happened, because under the previous government to be more "environmentally friendly" instead of using paint, they started putting plastic on the plates instead. Well that was good and all, the A-generation plates which I have are okay. Then they rolled through on the cost cutting. Nearly all B-series and C-series plates have the coating peel off in a few years. I can go for a walk down the street, and nearly every car with a B-series plate has lost it's plastic sheet coating, so they're simply bare aluminum. Of course, if you want a replacement they'll charge you for it to. Which has led to a low-level protest by people simply giving them a flip off. Even police don't press the law surrounding legibility because of that screw-up.

      You can read about the plate peeling here if you want. [theglobeandmail.com] An archive here incase you're paywalled. [archive.fo]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        "This is a lot to do with it. But here's the reason why this happened, because under the previous government to be more "environmentally friendly" instead of using paint, they started putting plastic on the plates instead. Well that was good and all, the A-generation plates which I have are okay. Then they rolled through on the cost cutting. Nearly all B-series and C-series plates have the coating peel off in a few years. I can go for a walk down the street, and nearly every car with a B-series plate has lo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Sounds to me like there aren't any defined requirements for visibility, readability, and durability of the plates (which should be primary requirements of a tag meant to uniquely identify motor vehicles in operation on the roads). Trying out new materials, coatings, etc. to be environmentally friendly/cost effective isn't bad in and of itself. Not having the requirements in place to ensure that the new approaches don't have unintended consequences is bad.

          There are for visibility, readability, but not for durability - unless they're street/highway signs. I can dig up the associated o.regs(provincial regulations) if you want, or you can look them up on the o.regs site. You'll specifically want R.R.O 615. [ontario.ca]

          The entire change from the old plates to the new one happened after the previous government started getting all touchy-feely and 'woe is me' with environmentalist bullshit being pushed at the cost of public safety. The same thing happened with the switch fr

      • So you are saying that Ontario has produced screwed up plates because the previous plates were screwed up. Why, were they required to follow precedence or something?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          That's pretty much how government works. One clusterfuck to another, the only question one can safely ask is "how badly of a clusterfuck will it truly be."

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Police had a hard time reading the old 6-series plates that existed prior to 1995 too. They didn't have any reflective material in them at all. The big problem with these ones is that police services here(except the OPP) are heavily reliant on plate auto-readers during a traffic stop. The OPP still call the plate in to dispatch for a check. The other problem is the old memorization system that you were required to learn(either the services or yours) for memorizing a plate in 15 seconds isn't taught anym

      • Actually, the plates are replaced free of charge if brought back within 5 years. https://www.ontario.ca/page/re... [ontario.ca]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Problem is most people who are experiencing the problem now have had the plates for over 8 years. All of the B series plates have problems, a specific subset first off the presses failed within 6-12mo. The plate on my parents vehicle started peeling last year, it's 9 years old.

    • The font and kerning is garbage for readability as well, as is proximity of characters to the edge of the plate. The paint is just one of the issues that make these difficult to read.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The problem is they used reflective paint for the blue background colors AND reflective paint for the numbers. They should use reflective paint for one or the other, but not both. The older license plates did not use reflective paint on the numbers (which were black, providing even more contrast).

      It has nothing to do with the design or color scheme. They just used the wrong paint additives.

      I thought most license plates were reflective by nature - thee background is reflective, while the numbers and letterin

  • This must be referring to the new weed growing industry in Canada! :^)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dpille ( 547949 )
      Well, either that or the prevalence of infringement in Ontario. Iowa was once "A Place to Grow" but has abandoned that in favor of "Fields of Opportunity." Good to hear that Canadian conservatives are incapable of coming up with their own ideas, too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      This must be referring to the new weed growing industry in Canada! :^)

      If it had been another Ford brother the slogan would have been "A Place to (do) Blow"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Well Ottawa is in Ontario, but that would also mean Pierre Trudeau would have coined that phrase 40 years ago.

  • Before politics Doug Ford was known for helping run the family label business. Now as premier he is famous for producing stickers that don't stick and plates that can't be read. Given his background, you would think he would know better, or at least should know someone who knows better.

  • The anarcho-capitalist in me sees this as a feature, not a bug.
  • So much wasted resources. And what makes these things HIGH DEFINITIION? Were the old plates made out of Legos or something? And where is the contrasting reflective paint? Why aren't they embossed so light reflection wont obscure the whole thing? He should have to reprint them using the party's own money AND pay for the first ones that wasted everyone's time.

    -Might as well make em a barcode.
  • No. I will not. Thank you very much.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I just came back from lunch, and there was a car in the lot with the new plate. I've seen the pictures of the completely unreadable plates, but the one I saw was completely legible, for whatever it's worth. Possibly there's a bad batch, or the issue occurs in different lighting conditions. But the problem may not be universal. Which, of course, only makes the problem worse, in terms of diagnosing the problem.

    • I just came back from lunch, and there was a car in the lot with the new plate. I've seen the pictures of the completely unreadable plates, but the one I saw was completely legible, for whatever it's worth.

      Do you work third shift so lunch is a 1 AM ? The article is about how the plates are illegible at night.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bdh ( 96224 )
        Whoops, wrong tab. I meant to post this in a thread on the issue of the problems it's having with photo radar [www.cbc.ca], not the night visibility. There are numerous complaints about the new plate in addition to the night visibility issue.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I have seen some California state plates where there is a darker color lettering over one of their special stylized backgrounds and the letters/numbers just blend into the background making them impossible to read, day or night. Honestly, I don't think the people who do these designs even think about the implications, just that the new look will be great aesthetically. How it passed the reviewers is beyond me - there are reviewers, aren't there?

  • Word choices (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @01:34PM (#59743628)

    The Canadian province's new design was unveiled by the provincial government -- led by center-right Ontario Premier Doug Ford -- last year. ... The plates also had a new slogan -- "A Place to Grow" -- which drew the ire of some critics, who preferred the previous "Yours to Discover," which the plates had sported since 1982.

    Conservatives prefer the word "mine" to "yours", but couldn't think of an acceptable public slogan for that...

  • Has no one tried a Polarizing Filter on the camera lens? Should eliminate that reflection.

  • I've had the same license plate since 1991, and moved it from vehicle to vehicle 8 times. The next vehicle I register will require I get a new plate. It's the end of an era.

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