A Guide to 3D/4D Plates, Show Plates and Road legal Plates
THE SHOW PLATE
What is a show plate? These plates may use nonstandard spacing or fonts. They may have more graphic elements. Overall, they do not adhere to the guidelines at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and therefore cannot be used for driving on UK roads.
But if they don’t meet the DVLA’s guidelines, what do you do with car show plate? Many people use them for non-road cars, such as classic vehicles that stay inside a garage or showroom. Car enthusiasts also purchase them for modified cars that aren’t street legal. There a great option for track days and photo shoots when you dont want you reg on display, as long as you don’t take them out on the road as a substitute for number plates.
UK DVLA/ROAD LEGAL PLATES
What are UK road legal plates? These are the types of number plates you can use on your car which are recognised as adhering with DVLA rules which have been established to ensure safety, legibility on the roads for traffic cameras and uniformity with other vehicles. The DVLA stipulate that vehicle registration numbers must be correctly displayed on number plates as set out in the Road Vehicles (Display of Registration Marks) Regulations. These regulations govern how vehicle registration number plates are designed, manufactured and displayed.
You can’t rearrange or misrepresent the numbers and letters on a number plate to form names or words, so that they are hard to read. For example, fixing bolts to change any of the letters or numbers.
The British Standard for Number Plates
The British Standard sets out the characteristics of the number plate. This includes visibility, strength and reflectivity. To meet the British Standard, each number plate must be permanently and legibly marked with the:
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British Standard number (currently BS AU 145d)
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name, trademark or other way of identifying themanufacturer or supplier
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Character Rules
Vehicles with new or replacement number plates fitted from 1 September 2001, cannot be shown over three lines. The standard font to be used is "Charles Wright" font and none other.
The characters on a number plate need to be a certain height and size:
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characters must be 79mm tall
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characters (except the number 1 or letter I) must be 50mm wide
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the character stroke (the thickness of the black print) must be 14mm
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the space between characters must be 11mm
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the space/separation between groups of characters must be 33mm
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the margins at the top, bottom and side of the plate must be 11mm
4D NUMBER PLATE GUIDE, ARE THEY LEGAL?
The DVLA has deemed 3D number plate designs as road legal if they conform to the government regulations. These rules are designed to ensure the plates are easy to read by authorities and other motorists during both day and night. This being the case, the same rules also apply to the legality of 4D plates.
Providing they conform to the rules regulating UK number plates, 4D plates are entirely legal to use on your car. For example, the acrylic characters must be presented in black on a white plate at the front of your vehicle and black on a yellow plate at the rear, both manufactured from reflective material. The characters must also follow the rules that dictate the measurements of letters and numbers, as well as the margins surrounding them.
The 4D characters on your plate must also be in the Charles Wright font to be up to standard. To ensure this, 4D laser-cut number plates are created using professional equipment that provides an exacting standard of laser cutting, precisely matching the Charles Wright Font used as standard on UK number plates.
The material of the plate the 4D characters are attached to must also meet the same high level of British Standard (BS AU 145d) in order to be legal.
4D number plates are made from super shiny black acrylic characters laser cut and then stuck to an acrylic plate with a high strength adhesive. The laser cut follows the legal specifications in terms of size and also the font style and you can add a different colour to fit underneath, sometimes described by suppliers as 4D Plus or, use fluorescent which is called 4D Neon which can look amazing when lit up at night in the headlights of other vehicles.