It included a Penalty Charge Notice for driving in a pedestrian zone near London. They had clearly been on the DVLA site and looked up my car registration (based on their photos) and deduced that my car is a Mercedes. The offence was committed in Barking, where neither I or my car have ever been. Even in the poor quality B&W photo, that they included, the offending car is clearly a Peugeot.
So I logged into the Barking and Dagenham council site where I was able to see the colour version of all the photos and they were much clearer. My car is silver/ grey and the car in the photos is metallic blue. The Peugeot sign is clearer and the last letter on the number plate is quite obviously a C. The C has a screw in the middle, to hold the number plate on to the car, making it look like an E, so I guess that their ‘Auto recognition software’ has screwed up. Had they applied a little quality control and human intervention this could have been avoided and the letter could have gone to the correct car owner. I am all for image processing, but the ‘mark 1 eyeball’ and common sense still have an important role. I await their reply informing me that they are dropping the charge…..
Gary Heald
