Automatic License Plate Readers Are Coming to Schools
Fears around children is opening up a new market for automatic license place readers.
Comments
Chris Becke • August 11, 2025 7:39 AM
@Safety first, I love watching, amongst other things, YouTube channels by civil engineers. Watching these makes it quite apparent that cameras are not effective at making cars slower or roads safer. But that there are other ways that are mostly subliminal that make roads “feel” like they need to be traversed slower while maximising pedestrian safety.
Wayne • August 11, 2025 9:14 AM
At one time, anti-surveillance people talked about IR LEDs in baseball caps to cause facial recognition cameras to flare and not record them. I’ve always wondered if a similar license plate frame would fox ALPRs.
I remember, it was probably 15 years ago, I was getting out of my car at a shopping mall in El Paso, TX and a police car was doing a slow crawl up and down the parking lot. It had ALPR cameras mounted on its light bar. I’m sure the excuse was that El Paso, being next to the border, has lots of cars stolen and then immediately taken across the border into Mexico. Which doesn’t make much sense: if the car is stolen, why would it be sitting in the parking lot at the mall before going across the border.
In Texas, their registered vehicles are required to have both front and rear license plates.
Safety first • August 11, 2025 9:57 AM
@Chris Oh, they’re effective where I’m at, no doubt about that. It’s the method they fall back to if others don’t work. Do you mean cameras that don’t actually result in fines? Other methods can certainly also work. Speed bumps, road narrowing, zig-zag lanes, etc.
wiredog • August 11, 2025 10:04 AM
Many of the local schools around here have speed bumps on the road either side of the school. Hit those at the speed limit and you get a jolt.
VDOT is placing speed bumps on lots of residential roads around here. The only complaints I’ve heard are from residents who don’t have them yet.
TimH • August 11, 2025 11:08 AM
I rented opposite a primary school in the middle of a residential area, so one narrow lane each way. At pickup time, that lane would be blocked by the line of helicopter parents waiting to pick up their little treasures. The use of the remaining lane by 2-way traffic caused much dangerous driving by frustrated drivers, and I witness a very near miss for the crossing lady. She thought so too, evidenced by the shouted “Mother F******”.
David_in_Toronto • August 11, 2025 11:12 AM
@Wayne IR LEDs in a hoodie is a plot device in the new Dexter series.
Somewhere in my collection of memes there is a parked car with banner after the license plate number adding ‘,0,0); drop database …. which instantly recalls little bobby tables with the delayed realization of the implications to an ALPR.
Rontea • August 11, 2025 12:37 PM
“License place” vs “license plate”
David_in_Toronto • August 11, 2025 1:53 PM
Yes, some safety measures seem to backfire.
Locally they started putting flexible bollards up around the street corners near schools. Narrows the road makes turns trickier. Very tricky if there are pickup trucks. But the kids now see this safety zone as a place to stand while waiting to cross making this extra dangerous as now cars and kids are closer. Plus I’ve seen someone hit the bollards, they bounce and would seriously injure someone standing next to them.
Bumps are great until you need the firedepartment.
Matt • August 11, 2025 3:03 PM
I once saw a blurb on the news where high school students were photographing teachers’ license plates, printing them in color, taping them to their own cars, and intentionally triggering red-light cameras.
Can you imaging the world of s#%@ you’d be in if you caused a crash…by intentionally triggering a red light camera…with a fake license plate?
SocraticGadfly • August 11, 2025 4:37 PM
For Safety and Chris, you can do BOTH!
Fine people who are speeding in school zones and caught on license plate readers AND
Put knuckles on intersection corners, flashing speed warning signs, speed bumps and whatever up at the same time.
Steve • August 11, 2025 8:25 PM
Bear in mind that school zones are occupied by kids only for a couple of hours every day, generally not on weekends, holidays, and intersessional breaks, and not at all during summer.
Installing permanent impediments such as speed bumps impair traffic flow all day and all night logn and can lead to accidents themselves (rear-enders, for instance).
Speed bumps can also be an annoyance to people who live adjacent to them. I briefly lived in a house on a street where the city decided that “traffic calming” was in order and they installed a speed bump more or less outside my bedroom window.
Every morning I was awakened by the serenade of the thump thump thump rattle rattle of gardening/lawn service trucks going up and down the hill as well as people gunning their engine after making it over the bump.
And the traffic? Not discernably “calmer” than before.
dug • August 11, 2025 8:39 PM
Round these parts, LEOs park at the school, lights on, and get out and direct traffic. Works great. Nobody speeds, traffic moves properly, kids are safe, it works.
Chris Becke • August 12, 2025 1:20 AM
To further divert this topic away from the growing surveillance state and towards unintended consequences in traffic control – speed bumps are more easilly ignored by vehicles with larger tyres – the kind of cars and trucks that already have poor visibility
Safety first • August 12, 2025 2:06 AM
And of course this ended up as a general car safety discussion. So let’s go general. “One more lane” never solves traffic, it only makes the problem worse. The only thing that can solve traffic is viable alternatives to driving, i.e. better public transit, and more walking and cycling. Research and practical experience shows that reducing speed limits and removing/narrowing car lanes reduces traffic and improves flow. It’s counter-intuitive, sure, but it works, because it reduces unnecessary driving. Aside, US/CA of course have extra problems such as bad city design and gigantic inefficient fire engines. Europe and especially Asia has shown that small, nimble emergency vehicles are much better for cities. Fire departments that oppose narrowing of roads are harming everyone, because wide roads lead to high speeds which cause more accidents.
These are all solved problems, just look to the right countries for the solutions. The Dutch, for example. (I’m not Dutch btw.)
@dug Sure, police will have that effect, if you can afford to have them standing around in the same place every day, and have enough to cover all the schools and kindergartens.
Joseph Kanowitz • August 12, 2025 4:59 AM
ב”ה,
Putting DoD in charge of DC law enforcement puts DoD in charge of cyber and financial crimes, including Congressional insider trading.
As a practical matter, law enforcement can also compel investment activity as part of an active investigation (January 6) until that becomes law.
It’s a tacticool economic miracle.
Wayne • August 12, 2025 11:41 AM
@Steve: I live in a literal village of 800 in New Mexico in the middle of a national forest at 9,000′. We have one highway through town, and our high school and lower grade school are adjacent to said highway, it has a speed limit of 35, which is nominally respected. Flashing lights for a 15 MPH speed limit at certain times during the week, and rumble strips do a good job of reminding people of the limit.
Speed bumps would be absolutely insane here! The rumble strips, not much of a problem. I generally go to the side slightly so my left tires go through the smooth middle.
@Dug: Amazing how much traffic calming flashing lights can do!
Chaz • August 13, 2025 12:29 AM
This is already deployed. At a K-12 campus “security” pitch last month in Oregon one of the billion dollar consultancies was gushing about their ability to instantly cross reference the plate of every vehicle that drives on (near?) a campus against a list of sex offenders, and set off an alarm in a monitoring center. They didn’t have a plan to foil a boogeyman who knows how to rent a car.
The pitched stepped through the myriad ways they track a child from the moment a school bus approaches their pickup spot (external cameras with facial ID) until it has driven out of site after dropping them off in the evening. Including monitoring for swearing and smells/vapes in the bathroom.
James W • August 13, 2025 9:35 AM
It’s such a cliche: “Won’t someone think of the children?” And it’s so often used to justify doing bad things. “Won’t someone think of the chidren?” -> creation of the surveillance state. Next thing you know I can’t get a hot dog from the gas station at night without the data brokers knowing about it.
Clive Robinson • August 13, 2025 12:38 PM
@/James W,
You are a little late on this,
“Next thing you know I can’t get a hot dog from the gas station at night without the data brokers knowing about it.”
If you are in the US or UK and you pay with anything other than cash –and with plastic being forced as compulsory– then the fact you’ve done so will be in a database before the “till jockey” has been told the transaction has been accepted.
If you are unlucky and you are away from your usual haunts then you get flagged up and the fraud software gets triggered and the clock starts on you and it goes off to all financial institutions and other databases including in the US some “real time DBs” that law enforcement can flag you with.
Give it five to ten years and the idiots behind the moronic politicos will push to make “cash illegal” as they are not getting what they see as their percentage entitlement from you and the merchants.
It’s one of the reasons why I only use cash… Another is I keep the receipts as I can use it as a little more than just “proof of purchase” if I need to.
Paul Sagi • August 14, 2025 3:13 AM
Anyone here remember school buses?
They do a great job of reducing car traffic near schools, while at the same time making parents less stressed.
School buses are an old simple low-tech solution.
Privacy • August 14, 2025 3:57 AM
OK, wanna defeat license plate readers?
Some use visible light, infrared light or a combination of those, to read the plates under various lighting conditions.
Cover the license plate with:
IR-Blocking Window Films: Transparent films that can be applied to Residential and commercial windows to reduce infrared heat gain.
Solar Control Films: Films that reduce solar heat and glare while maintaining visibility. Used on Automotive windows and building facades.
Transparent IR blocking paint can used to alter license plate numbers. In visible light a number can be 3 as usual, in IR light the number becomes 8.
Clive Robinson • August 14, 2025 6:05 AM
@ Paul Sagi,
With regards “school buses” they have a number of issues,
First and most obviously is,
“Who Pays?”
They are oft regarded as an easily expendable “social service”
Secondly the issue of “Disability” comes up but is kept quiet. The issue is that disabled people add significant time and man power and equipment requirements and that translates to increased costs so again,
“Who Pays?”
Thirdly is the “last mile” issue. In these days of helicopter parents and increased traffic using residential roads as “cut through at speed” short cuts school busses move both the perceived and real danger to children from the school gates to the last mile home. With the litigious nature of the US law suits will follow so again that question of,
“Who Pays?”
Fourthly is the issue of “time tables and routing”. In these days of “extra curricular” and “associated enrichment / advanced classes and “clubs” the school days are nolonger fixed.
One result is employers of parents see such longer school days as ways to get more work for less pay and as useful leverage against parents.
I could carry on but the “enforced society” by employers and litigation has made the existence of the school bus something “purse string holders” won’t pay for these days.
Which is why some are turning school gates into “profit centers” for the likes of Law Enforcement, Insurance Companies, and tax/revenue raising agencies.
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Safety first • August 11, 2025 7:28 AM
If they want to keep children safe, lower the speed limits around schools and make those automatic license place readers part of a speed camera system. One of the major threats school children face is stressed parents driving their kids to school. Lower speeds increase safety, and also reduce harmful air pollution which kids are especially vulnerable to.