"I was amazed that they managed to read the same plate wrong three times in a row," he said...The DMV told Eyewitness News they are considering dropping Q and zero from license plates because of the mix-ups.
When in doubt, dumb down and inconvenience everybody else.
Did you hear the one about the atheist Sunpass employee who didn't believe in "Dog"? Or how about "Look, up in the sky! It's a bird. It's a plane. It's 2perman!"
[More from "The Only Ones" Files]
7 comments:
I am mildly surprised they use "O" and "Q". The firm I work for does not use "I", "O", or "Q" for revision letters for the very reason that it is easy to confuse them with other letters/numbers. If someone is able to confuse a letter for a numeral and have the system accept it then the plate numbering scheme is deficient or the software used to validate data entry of plate numbers is deficient.
Implementing "fixes" for this type of problem is not really "dumbing" down the system; it is just taking into account facts about the human visual processing system. Reading is very much _not_ a natural thing and our visual processing system is optimized to solve a different problem: survival in the wild.
There's a fairly easy fix for this.
What you do is take an extra couple of seconds and make sure that license number actually matches the model of the car.
The easiest way to fix it is to get rid of the illegal vehicle registration schemes. No "license plates" = no confusion.
Or you could go hitech and use Optical Character Recognition, take a digital picture of the license plate, and electronically read the number/letters, then have the system verify that there is such a plate and automatically mail out the notice.
Here in Israel, We have an highway with OCR cameras that automatically recognize the vehicle, collect the toll, send the bill, and fine you if you don't pay.
We have digital cameras (with OCR) for perimeter security, the system automatically opens the front gate to let your vehicle in.
And all of the meter maids take digital photos of illegally parked cars as evidence to back up all of the tickets.
It's a hightech world out there.
They will never be able to drop the Q as far as they have dropped it paired with I.
IQ? Anyone?
The ability to read (and write) is a gift that we ought to appreciate. The fact that we have a highly sophisticated language is wonderful. We ought to appreciate it instead of continually sinking to the lowest common denominator (in this case dropping I, O, and Q). What ought to be done is force DMV employees to rise to the occasion and actually read for once.
I for one, do not wish to return to the dark ages, and that is exactly where this is headed. It pains me that people so readily accept dumbing-down. It is a sure indicator of their attitude about becoming slaves.
Entertain me, and I don’t care that I’m a slave.
Sickening.
"...sinking to the lowest common denominator (in this case dropping I, O, and Q)."
This is _not_ "sinking to the lowest common denominator". Everybody (well almost) is capable of distinguishing these letters; it is just a fact that they are commonly mistaken to be other letters or numerals. This _fact_ says absolutely _nothing_ about the intelligence or reading ability of the people in question.
Consider that the "firm" I noted does this is the largest commercial airplane maker in the world. Most of the people who have to use the drawings in question have a bachelor's degree (usually in engineering) and a significant portion of them have master's degrees. These are _not_ stupid people.
Dropping the I, O, and Q, for particular applications is just good engineering: recognition of a _fact_ about the human visual system as it relates to the _very_ unnatural activity of reading.
In terms of reading _words_, I have seen a number of different examples of text that is "mangled" in various ways that is still _very_ readable. The examples where portions of letters are just plain missing is somewhat amazing: you would be hard pressed to name an isolated letter but you can read the _sentence_ just fine.
"What ought to be done is force DMV employees to rise to the occasion and actually read for once."
If this was _reading_, I might agree with you; however, this is _not_ reading -- it is character recognition. It could be done by a person who cannot read -- and who might even be at an advantage at the task. As Deming said (paraphrased): "Don't blame the workers in a system for problems that are caused by the system."
After all that, I have to agree with Kent McManigal: no plates, no problem.
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