New Horizons in Epic Fail

[Brandenburger Toro]

Make all the jokes you like. Sometimes we deserve it.

[ursus arctos]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

I thought this was going to be about the RCC . . .

[Eggchaser]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

That certainly is a fantastic tale. Worthy of a QI question, frankly.

[tracteurgarcon]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

That reminds me of a story about a guy in the US who for a joke got a personalized number plate for his car that read "No Plate", he ended up with thousands of incorrectly issued parking and speeding tickets because when cops were ticketing a car with out registration they would write in the relevant box "No Plate".

[Bruno]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

Sounds like it worked out brilliantly for him.

[tracteurgarcon]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

Here's the story, I can't believe I remembered it almost entirely correctly

[Heliotrope]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

On the other hand, you could buy novelty Tennessee plates that spelled out ELVIS. My state only provides one plate, for the back of the car, so people who'd also put the Elvis plate on the front of the car would sometimes find under their windshields tickets for the Tennessee plate, which of course they'd never have to pay.

[hobbes]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

That's lovely that.

[Ginger Yellow]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

so people who'd also put the Elvis plate on the front of the car

Isn't that illegal?

The staggering thing about the Irish story is that it comes across as if it's never occurred to the police that someone might give them a false name or address. Surely there's some mechanism to track this sort of thing that should have flagged this up ages ago.

[ursus arctos]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

It's not illegal in one plate states (like Heliotrope's).

It would be in states that require plates on both ends of the vehicle.

[Bill Poster]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

To which they presumably mumbled "huh huh thankyouverymuch"

EDIT: in rely to Heliotrope

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

New Horizons in Epic Fail

The biggest problem with the initial deployment of the Garda Pulse computer system is that each type of crime has an associated number, with it, and the garda was supposed to look up the number associated with the crime and enter it when electronically recording the offence.

Unfortunately Ireland's largely computer illiterate police would often just cheerfully sit down and enter every single crime they encountered under their own favourite crime number. Conequently anyone reading the raw data would have been astonished by the outbreaks of anachronistic crimes like being drunk in charge of a cow in the heart of cities, or massive outbreaks of selling trinkets without a licence on a tram in the depths of rural Ireland.