Feel lucky Cali residents. Here in Vegas, if you are anywhere in the intersection when the light turns red, you can get a ticket. Just got back from traffic school. Had to break the law to learn it.

 

Sprays do not work. The license plate is already light-reflective so, what does that tell you? Clearcoating won't do much except probably just look more laminated. That is my 0.02 anyways.

 

All I know is my optician makes a lot of money pushing those "glareless" lenses- I didn't get them, so some photos of me have so much glare on my eyeglasses that you do not see my eyes.

So there is definitely a way to have a clear material reflect glare to the point you don't see the plate under it, but it is only gonna happen under certain lighting conditions, and you don't get to control that at the intersection.

And not to be argumentive, moshlub, but $2 billion is a LOT of money- Caltrans entire budget for 2001-2002 was $9.3 billion! And states don't budget for red light cameras anymore than they budget for red lights- that is up to each municipality within the state.

 

Glare on eyeglasses only occurs at certain angles where the camera flash reflects light back at you. Same happens when you take a picture of an aquarium; However, tilt the camera slightly, and the pictures come out good. Traffic cameras don't use a flash (I don't think) and are angled downwards so the shot is perfect. Those reflective covers probably use a form of opaline silica (silicon dioxide) similar to those found naturally in diatomic frustules, that create a reflective glare out of ambient light at precisely the same angle as the position of the traffic camera.

 

If your camera is getting glare off a flat surface, like an aquarium, tilting the camera won't eliminate it. Only moving the camera position, the light source, or tilting the aquarium (don't tilt too much, or the fish will spill out) will change the glare.

And my convex eyeglasses, just like a cheap RCA TV, are curved enough to reflect glare from light sources in all parts of the room. So make a front license plate cover convex enough, and it'll glare up nicely on sunny days. Your car will look a little funny, though.

From the http://www.uspt.com/ web page:

Pic of a red light camera- one opening is the lens, the other is the flash unit (the whole box is bullet-proof, by the way). Indeed, it is the bright flash that red light runners dread - that's the "GOTCHA" flash!



The flash is necessary to get a good pic of the driver's face.