EVERY day, millions of us jump in our cars to get us to where we need to go without giving it much thought.
But keeping us safe is a nationwide network of cameras that detect , to make sure that when a driver does something wrong, they can be caught.
But Britain’s roads are , with more and more people using illegal number plates that make car owners impossible to trace.
It means criminals and dangerous drivers have free range to do what they want, safe in the knowledge that they cannot be caught.
Now, a new BBC Panorama documentary has revealed the extent of the crisis gripping our roads, from crooks skipping parking fines to brazen youths feeling empowered to joyride – with deadly consequences.
It comes after a that revealed there are as many as one million dodgy plates in use around the country.
Not only did we expose sellers on social media, but our reporter was able to easily purchase a number plate from a firm without any of the required documentation.
The on the A66 in highlighted how the crisis is now a matter of life and death.
Hero officers PC Matthew Blades, 37 and PC Tom Clough, 38, were killed when a car packed with five young men raced down the dual carriageway on the wrong side of the road and smashed into them head on.
Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Theo Rae, 17, Cole Robert Worthy, 17, Jacob Matusiak, 23, and Makai Saddington, 18, were in the car responsible and also died.
said they believe the car they were driving had cloned plates – with fears this contributed to them feeling like they could get away with anything, including driving so dangerously.
Two kinds of number plates are at the centre of this crisis: cloned plates and ghost plates.
Cloned plates are replicas of real number plates associated with another vehicle.
It had led to unwitting motorists being slapped with fines for something they had nothing to do with – all because someone had copied their registration and put it on another vehicle.
That’s what happened to 90-year-old Trevor, who started to receive letters on his doormat from Southwark Council, for parking fines in Peckham – even though he lived up in Glossop, miles away in , and hadn’t been to London.
Pictures attached to the letters showed what looked like a rented van using his plate number.
In total, Trevor received 13 notices demanding more than £1,800 in total, leaving him terrified that debt collectors would turn up any day.
But despite the clear error, Southwark wouldn’t budge.
“You might as well have been talking to the fridge,” he said.
It was only with the help of their MP and their local Citizen’s Advice that the fines were overturned – but Trevor and his wife still fear they could come through again at any moment.
Southwark Council said they regret the frustration caused.
Ghost plates, meanwhile, using special materials to confuse the cameras that line the roads and detect numberplates.
The system – called Automatic Number Plate Recognition, or ANPR for short – relies on infrared imaging to pick out the black numbers and letters on plates.
But ghost plates use a special kind of plastic that makes the black characters appear pale or invisible to the cameras – or ghostlike.
With the use of ANPR to issue fines – for everything from speeding to skirting tolls – more and more people are turning to ghost plates as a way to cheat the system.
The Middlesbrough case is far from the only time a driver using illegal plates caused devastation to a family.
In 2025, 81-year-old Graham Slinn was out on a cycle and walking across a pedestrian crossing in South Yorkshire – but .
Instead, despite it being his turn to cross, a car came out of the blue and hit him straight on at about 80mph, throwing him about 15ft into the air.
He was killed instantly. Behind the wheel was 20-year old Cain Byrne, who didn’t have a licence, , and was high on nitrous oxide.
Byrne did not stop, only being caught after police went through hours of CCTV footage – he had also been using cloned plates. Byrne was jailed for 11 years and six months.
“It would have been my mum and dad’s 60th wedding anniversary. They were going to get a blessing, and we were going to have a big family celebration,” said Graham’s daughter, Nicola.
“Instead we were arranging a funeral. We didn’t expect not to say goodbye.”
CCTV footage even showed the moment Byrne fitted the illegal plates onto the car.
Her brother, Victor, added: “You’ll take more risks if you know you’re less likely to be caught.”
Jason Wallis was killed in Buckinghamshire in 2023, while riding on the back of a motorbike that was being driven by his brother-in-law Lewis Baker.
The pair were travelling at dangerously high speeds of 178mph when they crashed into a car. The driver was not hurt and Baker also survived.
He was jailed for 15 months and admitted he had used a device to hide his number plate.
Sharon Gannon, Jason’s mum, said being able to hide their plates gave them the confidence to ride so dangerously.
“Jay would be here today,” she said. “It has broken us all.”
It is illegal have ghost plates on your vehicle and illegal to sell ghost plates with the intention for them to be used to avoid ANPR.
However, in recent years there has been a total lack of crackdowns on sellers.
visited a number plate supplier in the West Midlands with the police, who were found to be intentionally supplying ghost plates.
However, rather than being fined or imprisoned, they were just sent a warning letter.
Journalist Rahil Sheikh also visited a market in Essex where he was able to easily request plates that could skirt the cameras – and was able to buy plates without any of the necessary documentation.
There are more than 34,000 businesses registered in the UK to supply number plates, with the laws around it much more lax compared to countries like France.
All it takes to become a supplier is to fill out a form and pay a £40 fee.
Yet although the DVLA aims to audit each supplier every three years, in the past five years, only 23 per cent of suppliers had been audited.
And since 2020 only two supplies have been prosecuted.
Meanwhile, the DVLA only has six officers to audit the tens of thousands of suppliers out there.
to get the punishment for having an illegal plate increased from a £100 fine to a £1,000 fine and six penalty points.
She said previously “Cloned and ghost number plates are being used in everything from racing to drug-dealing to murder. The DVLA must take control of this number plate Wild West.
“We as MPs cannot stand by and watch as the situation gets worse, putting ordinary drivers and members of the public in danger.”
The DVLA said they were strengthening enforcement.
The Government said they are creating a national centre to crack down on illegal number plates.
