Michael McAleer answers your queries
John Godden, Co Wicklow:
My query is of the order of interesting information relative to what we see on the road, especially when the tourist season burgeons (we hope.)
All our European, and international, visitors have their own style of registration plates. Ours is a good one that I suppose we all understand, in that we can at a glance identify the proud vehicle's year of birth, county of birth and serial number.
The new British system has similar information displayed if we care to decipher it.
What about the other ones? It would be lovely, but not of course essential, to know their bases.
On a related note, previously the British have been able to personalise, and buy and sell, numbers, which essentially means that the year of origin of the vehicle now wearing the plate is falsified. Does this system continue with the new numbering?
The personalised number plate is alive and well and a common feature on many a Ford Capri in Essex. The new rules introduced a numbering system beginning with 02 for cars registered between March and September 2002, and 52 for cars registered from September until March 2003.
The numbers will continue until 2049 when they will probably be replaced by another system - by that time they will have reached 49 for cars registered in March, and 99 for cars registered that September.
However, unlike our system in which the numberplate is fixed to the car, the system of personalised number plates means that an older plate can still be assigned to a new car, either with or without the new system. In short this means that dating British cars using their plates remains at best unreliable.
The local identifier letter is also generally worthless as many cars on British roads are company or fleet cars, in which case they are registered in bulk at some garage miles from where the owner either lives or works.
Germany uses between one and three characters for the city. When you come across a car from a different city, you tend to give them more leeway as they are probably new to the area.
Our system has had a great deal of praise on the European stage for its simple approach. However, the downside has been a culture of snobbery in certain areas, with people replacing their cars every year to keep up with the change of number plates.
As for other European systems, I'm not up-to-date with the entire registration systems of our EU partners, but would welcome any advice from our European readers.
From Tim O'Byrne:
I'm one of the thousands of commuters who spend a lifetime travelling to and from the city centre to work. I read the articles in MOTORS last week about young people getting on the road and my girlfriend and I are considering whether or not to get a car. While we are aware of all the traffic problems and the price of insurance, our concern is where to park the car in the city? Neither of us have jobs that come with parking places.
Glad to read you've got everything else sorted. That's more than most of us have. If your only concern is parking, you're really well on the way to joining the motoring community.
However, before you join the rest of us motorists parked every morning on the roads into our city, a quick account should be made of the cost of parking in the city centre. Like it or not, the continued rise in price over the years is aimed at driving out he regular commuter and catering only for those who park short-term.
City centre car parks can cost well over €20 a day. We recently found the NCP on Cathal Brugha Street one of the cheaper options, offering a special €15 daily rate, but the deal has ended.
With the planners choking our cities arteries by bringing them to single lanes at some stage, with the high price of parking, we have great difficulty understanding your desire to drive into the city centre on a daily basis. You must be a very patient soul.