How people you know could be using 'ghost plates' to dodge speeding tickets

It is the noisy problem that keeps residents across the country awake late at night, as engines roar and tyres screech – leading to fatal crashes tragically often.

Illegal street racing is a menace on many British roads, leading people to question why speed cameras cannot prevent its dangers.

That is what Labour MP Sarah Coombes asked police last year when she visited Kenrick Way, a notorious racing hotspot in her constituency of West Bromwich.

“The police said to me: ‘Sarah, all these racers have got ‘ghost plates’ now, so there’s no point’,” she recalls. It was the first time she’d heard that phrase.

Officers explained how it was becoming increasingly common for people to spray their cars’ number plates or place a plastic film over them, making them unreadable by most automatic numb