Number plate mix-up: Rotterdam man getting Breda driver’s parking fines since 2022
A man from Rotterdam has been wrongly receiving parking tickets from Breda for two years. A screw on the license plate of a car in the Noord-Brabant city keeps confusing the scanner of the patrol car. It’s happened almost 50 times, the 42-year-old Abdullah told Rijnmond.
Abdullah received his first fine from Breda in August 2022 while he was on holiday. He assumed someone had borrowed his car and visited Norod-Brabant city, but that turned out not to be the case. So he contacted the municipality and found out that the scan photo did not show his car, and the parking ticket was revoked. He’s been through that same process almost 50 times since.
“Every time I get an email saying it’s an error and the car involved is not my car,” he said. The municipality of Breda told him that the automatic scanner keeps mixing up his license plate with another one that differs by one letter. “I have a B, and he or she has a D.”
Abdullah asked a friend in Breda to go to the street where all the parking fines come from and see if he could find the car. The issue turned out to be a screw on the license plate, placed right in the middle of the D. “As a result, the scan car reads B,” he said. He suspects that the car’s owner lives on the street and has a parking permit. “Only the scan car thinks every time that a car from Rotterdam-Zuid is parked there.”
According to the Rotterdam man, the municipality of Breda has confirmed that the screw is probably the problem. But Abdullah continues to get fines. “I’m so tired of it. I have to make sure it gets fixed every time. I spend so much time on it,” he said.
Rijnmond asked readers for advice on how Abdullah could deal with this situation. One reader suggested that he go to Breda and secretly paint the screw yellow, or place a yellow cap over it, so that the scanner can’t see it. “The owner doesn’t even have to know.”
A spokesperson for the municipality of Breda told Rijnmond that it has adjusted its system so that the Rotterdam resident won’t receive these fines anymore, for the time being at least.
