Comment by dec0dedab0de
6 years ago
This isn't even a coding error, NULL is apparently valid license plate, and for some reason there is a private processing center typing it in to the government system.
First of all they are accidentally committing fraud (libel?) against this guy. But more importantly, why is there a private processing center? Don't the officers type this in as they fill out the ticket? or even just scan the plates? If there aren't plates on the vehicle it should be towed or booted. What is the point of recording tickets with no plates? Is the processing center paid per ticket recorded?
> This isn't even a coding error, NULL is apparently valid license plate, and for some reason there is a private processing center typing it in to the government system.
I would take that with a grain of salt. The linked article on a talk-radio site, and was likely intended as a wacky news bite that the hosts breeze through and then make jokes about. I figured the exact technical details of what is causing the problem was lost in translation. More likely that they were leaving the plate blank, and then the backend software was confusing null database fields with the string "NULL".
It's not fraud or libel, it's an unavoidable problem with in-band signalling [1].
I assume the government entry system doesn't have an explicit way to set the data as missing, so they work around it like this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-band_signaling
Guess they should have used the Maybe monad!
They'd type in: Just "NULL"
Brand new cars don't yet have plates. Granted, most states now have dealer-printed labels with an identifier on them, but still, new cars don't immediately have plates when they roll off the lot.
When I lived in West Virginia, recently sold cars did not have temporary tags. It was very common to see hand-scrawled signs "TAF" in the back windows. TAF stood for "Tags Applied For."
I'm not sure if that's still happening.