No, you cannot trust the car's optical number plate recognition!

Optical license plate recognition does not always work

Elbil24.no published an article about a Tesla driver who was given a speeding fine of NOK 10 after driving in a 850 km/h 112 zone. The man thought the speed limit was 80 km/h because it was the which was on the screen. It is easy to compare with boat drivers who steer their boat straight on a marked reef while the nose is planted in the chart plotter.

There is no excuse

Although the man on the edge receives pity, he is not without guilt—not without shame. He has undoubtedly shown poor seamanship. You are welcome to use the chart plotter to orientate yourself, but the physical sea marks must be observed with your own eyes. The sea mark you don't see can be fatal for you and yours.

The man who was caught speeding claimed that he wanted to warn other drivers. Had jeg were him, I would not want to tell this story in the press. Out of shame. I would feel like the man on the cliff…

"It was not me. It was the chartplotter.”

The problem is not that the technology is failing. In my opinion, the biggest danger is that it may become legitimate to blame the technology instead of the driver when self-driving technology does not work.

I recently experienced how a new car can misinterpret everyday traffic situations. I was driving on a two-lane road at 50 km/h. There were roadworks signs, and part of my lane was narrowed in with curbs placed in the road, - but still wide enough to pass. The car's emergency system judged the obstacle on the side of the road to be so serious that it grabbed the steering wheel to throw me across the center line - right in front of an oncoming train. Fortunately, the car was not self-driving.

Obos previously had a project with self-propelled buses in Fornebu. It didn't work well. The buses went at walking speed and stopped abruptly every time a straw along the road moved.

GPS map or optical license plate recognition

License plate recognition can be carried out in two different ways - or in combination. The simplest is based on GPS in relation to a static map. A more advanced method is optical license plate recognition. This method depends on good visibility, that the signs are at the right height and angle - and that they are not faded, dirty, covered in snow or discoloured. When the optical reading doesn't work, the system can fall back on GPS and maps - or it can go into error mode. If the Tesla does not find the speed limit - and perhaps thinks that the highway you are driving on does not exist in reality, it brakes hard and unmotivated down to 30 km/h.

Anyone can be caught speeding

Just as everyone can walk on a reef. It is used sympathetically to say that you can divide boaters into two groups. Those who has gone aground and those who coming to run aground. So there is no shame in going on a reef. The shame is walking on a reef because you unilaterally trusted technology instead of seamanship. So it is the man's explanation which doesn't hold - not that he was caught speeding.

Cars cannot drive themselves

Optical license plate recognition is an important part of self-driving technology. Anyone who drives a Tesla knows that the license plate recognition function is absolutely not to be trusted. You don't have to drive very far either to experience this. If you drive on cruise control, you may experience that the car suddenly and for no apparent reason brakes suddenly because it can no longer read the speed limit. Everyone can imagine what can happen if a self-driving Tesla in the left lane suddenly and completely unmotivated changes its speed from 110 to 30 km/h.