Heigardian car number plates show the place where the car carrying them is registered. Whenever a person changes its main residence within the country or buys a new car, they are required to buy new number plates. Number plates are valid for a period of 5 years. Buying new plates costs around €30 plus a fee for de-registering the old plate and registering the new one. During the 5-year use of plates a once-per year tax must be payed to allow circulation.
Format[]
The present format of Heigaridan number plates is used since 1994. As the most of plates in countries within the European Union, a blue strip on the left shows a shortened country code in white text (HE for Héigard = Heigard and the Flag of Europe (12 golden stars forming a circle on a blue background).
The rest of the licence plate uses black print on a white background. Just after the country code strip is a two-letter abbreviation which represents the department where the car was registered, such a CH for Charleroi. The department code is followed by a 4-digit random number, ranging from 0000 to 9999 and a letter indicating the vehicle class.
Vehicle classes[]
- A for particular owned vehicles.
- B for taxis and rental vehicles.
- C for trucks.
- D for private or public buses.
- E for government vehicles.
- F for any other vehicle not listed above.
Typeface[]
Modern plates in Heigard use a typeface called FE-Schrift ("fälschungserschwerende Schrift", tamper-hindering script), also used in Germany. It is designed so that the O cannot be painted to look like a Q, and vice versa; nor can the P be painted to resemble an R, amongst other changes. This typeface can also more easily be read by optical character recognition software for automatic number plate recognition.
Special plate[]
- The military plates use the code AH (for Armées Héigardiennes or Armadas Heigardianas) instead of the department code followed by a 5-digit number (an additional number replacing the vehicle class code). A Heigardian flag is shown instead of the EU blue strip.
- Vehicles exempt from circulation taxes (such as ambulances, tractors, agricultural trailers...) have green-painted letters instead of black.