Got a £30 fixed penalty for small reg plate today. Bummer!

Originally Posted by l3xus01

a think there must be a different law up here in scottyland as av been pulled twice for my plate but no letter from dvla and that was a while ago...

The law regarding this is exactly the same 'up here' in Scotland.

The reason why you probably haven't received a letter from DVLA is due to the fact that the cop who deals with the registration offence, personally has to notify DVLA in writing regarding the incident.

In other words once issuing you with the £30 "Conditional offer" (which is legally the end of the matter if you pay up within the 28 days) he then has to return to the office & submit a further notification to DVLA.
This further notification is only a matter of 15mins worth of his time in but to be perfectly honest does not happen very often.

It seems that your two incidents either have not been reported at all or DVLA are only aware of one of them.

A pain in the **** to re register your bike if it does happen, a bigger pain in the **** if you have spent a lot of money on a "Cherished Transfer" for DVLA to then take it off you & re-sell it.
You are not, by any means, due a refund or compenstaion.

[quote="lynwPulled or issued with FPNs? If its a pull and no FPN issued then DVLA wont be notified.[/quote]

This is not true!

There is nothing to prevent the cop taking details of you & the bike & notifying DVLA.

Easiest way to avoid this I find is to just buy a standard sized legal plate, then cut the edges down. You get a small plate, but all the lettering and spaces (well except the space to the edge of plate) are legal.

Riding with a plate as small as you've got, you're asking for bother.

Originally Posted by Saint Matt

Shouldnt have a small plate then lol. I think that's a mod I wouldn't ever do because of the po-po attention.

Yep. I can see (hear) why people like having race cans on bikes and given the ways of concealing it, run the risk. However, a small plate is fairly black and white (or rather yellow and black) and there's no arguing about it if you get pulled. People who put small plates on already illegal bikes (not suggesting that's what you're doing) are particularly dim, as they'll invariably pull you for the small plate then spot you're not insured/are running race slick/etc.

I remember reading in MCN a while back a letter from a chap asking people to stop complaining about being pulled for small plates. He said he had a 400bhp turbo 'busa with a race can and had never been pulled; precisely because he had a stock numberplate on it.

[Skip]

Originally Posted by Jase22

Easiest way to avoid this I find is to just buy a standard sized legal plate, then cut the edges down. You get a small plate, but all the lettering and spaces (well except the space to the edge of plate) are legal.

Riding with a plate as small as you've got, you're asking for bother.

The law states that you have to have 5mm of edging around the letters...

*tosses in 2 penneth*

[northwind]

Also, apply a little common sense. A one-line plate in white and red with brush calligraphy instead of numbers is going to get you a lot more attention than a fundamentally legal-looking plate that's just undersized, for example.

Originally Posted by Skip

The law states that you have to have 5mm of edging around the letters...

*tosses in 2 penneth*

Rarely causes you to get any unwanted attention though, unlike a postage stamp sized plate.

[Skip]

Originally Posted by Jase22

Rarely causes you to get any unwanted attention though, unlike a postage stamp sized plate.

Exactly - one reason I wont bother changing my plate! Main reason is I probably do enough law breaking stuff on the bike not to have something else to worry about!

It's not worth it. Small plates have never bothered me.
I do get ****ed off when I see cages with non-legal plates everyday and very few of them every seem to get stopped.

Originally Posted by Razor

It's not worth it. Small plates have never bothered me.
I do get p*ssed off when I see cages with non-legal plates everyday and very few of them every seem to get stopped.

Yes, there seems to be a bit of a double standard regarding this. Admittedly at a bike meet there is likely to be a high concentration of bikes with non-legal plates so they're easy to target, but you seldom hear of burns (chav car meets) recieving the same treatment.

What makes this especially annoying is that generally speaking, small bike plates tend to still be easily ledgible, even at a distance; they're just smaller. Whereas car ones tend to be personalised plates with screws placed to make an "F" look like an "E", or vice versa, as well as funny looking fonts that are impossible to read accurately at 5 ft, never mind 50, etc.