vehicles 0.4.1 → 0.8.0

data/data/plates/au-tas.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,302 @@
+# plates/au-tas.yml — Tasmania (PRD-PLATES gate L3, Australia).
+#
+# THIS FILE CARRIES THE SENTENCE THAT EXPLAINS THE WHOLE AUSTRALIAN WAVE.
+# Vehicle and Traffic (Driver Licensing and Vehicle Registration) Regulations
+# 2021 (Tas), reg 88(1), verbatim:
+#
+#   "On registering a vehicle, the Registrar must assign a distinguishing
+#    registration number to the vehicle."
+#
+# That is the entire statutory basis of a Tasmanian registration number. There
+# is no schedule of permitted layouts (contrast the United Kingdom's Schedule 3
+# Table A, plates/gb.yml), no serial grammar (contrast Germany's FZV Anlage 1),
+# no alphabet, no length. The Registrar assigns; the law does not say what. Every
+# Australian jurisdiction is built this way, which is why the FORMAT claims in
+# this wave come from agency pages, ministerial statements and — where those are
+# silent, as here — from flagged secondary sources, and never from the
+# instrument. Recording that structural fact once, from the instrument that
+# states it most plainly, is worth more than eight vague apologies.
+#
+# WHAT TASMANIA DOES GIVE, and it is the best display-rule set in the wave
+# after Queensland's: reg 88 (issue and ownership of plates, accessory plates),
+# reg 89 (the seven-day fitting deadline, position, the 20 m / 45 degree
+# visibility test, covers, photographic-detection-device integrity), and a
+# self-contained personalised-plate regime under the heading "Specific
+# registration numbers" whose fee provision points at the operator's contract
+# with the Department.
+#
+# WHAT TASMANIA DOES NOT GIVE, stated bluntly: no general-issue grammar
+# anywhere. The Registrar publishes none, the Department of State Growth's
+# transport site sits behind a Cloudflare managed challenge that returns 403 to
+# machine clients, and TasPlates — the State's personalised-plate operation,
+# whose footer reads "TM of the Crown in Right of Tasmania" — is a JavaScript
+# application with no server-rendered text. So the current series below carries
+# `format.evidence: secondary` and no "one series back" is authored at all.
+# Eight honest files beat eight padded ones.
+jurisdiction: au-tas
+authority:
+  name: Registrar of Motor Vehicles, Department of State Growth (Tasmania)
+  url: "https://www.transport.tas.gov.au/"
+binding: vehicle
+binding_note: >-
+  reg 88(6), verbatim: a number plate issued under the regulation "remains the
+  property of the Registrar" unless it was issued in respect of a heavy vehicle
+  in the circumstances the subregulation goes on to describe. The Registrar may
+  also take a number back: the regulation headed "Registrar may require return
+  of number plates" applies where the Registrar "is of the opinion that the
+  registration number on a number plate ... may be mistaken for another
+  registration number", among other triggers — a real, sourced anti-confusion
+  power that no other Australian file in this wave found in terms.
+instrument:
+  citation: "Vehicle and Traffic (Driver Licensing and Vehicle Registration) Regulations 2021 (Tas), S.R. 2021 No. 26, made under the Vehicle and Traffic Act 1999 (Tas)"
+  made: "made by the Governor with the advice of the Executive Council; the instrument's assent date is recorded in the Tasmanian Parliamentary Counsel's XML as 2021-05-28"
+  reprint_read: "reprint current as at 2026-08-01, published 2026-07-29 (OQPC/Tasmanian PCO XML attributes); one subregulation of reg 88 is noted as amended by S.R. 2026, No. 19"
+  minister: "made on the advice of the Executive Council; countersigned by the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport"
+  source: "https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/sr-2021-026  # read as Tasmanian PCO XML at /view/whole/xml/inforce/current/sr-2021-026 on 2026-08-02"
+  robots_note: >-
+    RECORDED FOR THE VERIFIER, because it shaped how this file was researched:
+    legislation.tas.gov.au's robots.txt blocks a named list of search-engine and
+    AI crawlers wholesale (googlebot, bingbot, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User,
+    anthropic-ai, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, CCBot, Amazonbot) while
+    allowing everything else except /admin/. This pass made a small number of
+    targeted, user-directed retrievals of the single instrument cited here
+    rather than any crawl, and did not fetch any other Tasmanian statute.
+  licence: "Tasmanian legislation published by the Tasmanian Parliamentary Counsel's Office. Edicts of government — quoted, never embedded (PRD-PLATES §4)"
+
+national_schemes:
+  heavy_vehicle: >-
+    Heavy vehicles over 4.5 t GVM are registered under the Heavy Vehicle
+    National Law as applied in Tasmania and carry a NATIONAL HEAVY VEHICLE
+    NUMBER PLATE issued by the State registrar on the national pattern. reg 88
+    carves them out of the ordinary plate-ownership rule in terms ("if the
+    number plate is issued in respect of a heavy vehicle"), and the Tasmanian
+    statute book carries a Heavy Vehicle National Law (Tasmania) regulation of
+    its own. Mechanism, not a series: the national heavy-vehicle serial grammar
+    was not obtained (recorded gap, L4).
+  light_vehicle_standards: >-
+    Australian Light Vehicle Standards Rules 2015 (national MODEL law,
+    Parliamentary Counsel's Committee, consolidated 22 March 2019) rule 86,
+    verbatim: "At least 1 number plate light must be fitted to the rear of a
+    vehicle." The Rules "do not, by themselves, have any legal effect" and
+    prescribe no plate dimension, colour or serial grammar.
+  source: "https://www.pcc.gov.au/uniform/Australian%20Light%20Vehicle%20Standards%20Rules%202015%20-%2022%20March%202019.pdf  # ALVSR 2015 rule 86 and the model-law disclaimer, accessed 2026-08-02"
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# Display rules — from the instrument, verbatim. Note the SEVEN-DAY fitting
+# deadline, which is a Tasmanian peculiarity: no other Australian regulation
+# read in this wave puts a clock on getting the plate onto the vehicle.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+display_rules:
+  issue: "reg 88(1), verbatim: 'On registering a vehicle, the Registrar must assign a distinguishing registration number to the vehicle.' reg 88(4): 'For each registered vehicle, the Registrar must issue one or more number plates (as may be appropriate to the vehicle) bearing the registration number assigned to the vehicle.'"
+  reassignment: "reg 88(2), verbatim: the Registrar may 'on renewing the registration of a vehicle, or at any other time, by written notice to the registered operator, withdraw the distinguishing number assigned to the vehicle and assign a new distinguishing registration number' — the number is not the operator's to keep"
+  fitting_deadline: "reg 89, verbatim: the registered operator must ensure that 'within 7 days after the Registrar issues a number plate or number plates for the vehicle, the number plate or plates are permanently affixed to the vehicle'"
+  plates_per_vehicle: "reg 89, verbatim: 'in the case of a motor vehicle other than a motor cycle or quad bike, one number plate must be affixed to the front of the vehicle and another to its rear' / 'in the case of a motor cycle, quad bike or trailer, the number plate must be affixed to its rear'"
+  visibility: "reg 89, verbatim: 'the registration number on the number plate (or each of the number plates) must be clearly visible from a distance of 20 metres at any point within an arc of 45 degrees from the surface of the number plate above or to either side of the vehicle'"
+  covers_and_cameras: "reg 89, verbatim: any cover must have 'no reflective or other characteristics that would prevent the production of a clear photograph of the number plate by a photographic detection device'; and 'A person must not apply a substance to a number plate if the substance would prevent the production of a clear photograph of the number plate by a photographic detection device.'"
+  obstruction: "reg 89, verbatim: 'no object (other than a trailer to which an unobscured number plate is correctly affixed) over or in the vicinity of a number plate obscures or reduces the visibility of the number plate'"
+  accessory_plates: "reg 88(5): the Registrar may issue an accessory number plate for a bicycle rack or other removable equipment, on application by the registered operator of a motor vehicle other than a motor cycle or quad bike, or of a trailer; displaying it other than on that equipment is an offence (fine not exceeding 10 penalty units)"
+  defence: "reg 89 provides a defence where 'the non-compliance with this regulation was a result of an accident' and it was not reasonable to have remedied it by the time of the alleged offence"
+  sources:
+    - "https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/sr-2021-026  # Vehicle and Traffic (Driver Licensing and Vehicle Registration) Regulations 2021 (Tas) regs 88 and 89 and the definition of 'accessory number plate' in reg 3 (accessed 2026-08-02)"
+
+series:
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # CURRENT GENERAL ISSUE — sourced format-wise only to secondary references,
+  # and the file says so in every field that touches it.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-tas-standard
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, trailer]
+    period: { start: 2008 }        # SECONDARY, but a SPECIFIC secondary claim:
+                                   # "On 24 February 2008, the Government of
+                                   # Tasmania issued a new registration plate
+                                   # design in the format A 00 AA". Re-dated
+                                   # from 2013 in the completion pass — see the
+                                   # RE-DATED paragraph in notes.
+    period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "L99 LL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z]\d{2} ?[A-Z]{2}\z'
+      evidence: secondary
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          Five characters: a leading letter, two numerals, two letters. NO
+          TASMANIAN SOURCE OF ANY KIND STATES THIS — not the Regulations, which
+          say only that the Registrar assigns a "distinguishing registration
+          number"; not the Department of State Growth's transport site, which
+          returns HTTP 403 to machine clients; not TasPlates, which is a
+          JavaScript application. The shape is the locator's, corroborated only
+          in the weak sense that photographs on an enthusiast reference are
+          consistent with it. THE LEADING LETTER IS A SERIES MARKER THAT
+          ADVANCES — it is reported to be in the 'N' block at present — so it is
+          spelled as a letter class and NOT as a fixed literal; encoding today's
+          block would guarantee a wrong answer within a few years. There is
+          consequently no `regex_strict`.
+    design:
+      colour_note: "blue characters on a white ground, per the locator; no Tasmanian government source states any colour and no hex is recorded"
+      plate: { w: 372, h: 134, unit: mm }
+      plate_dimension_note: "the cross-State Australian passenger size sourced in plates/au-wa.yml (WA DoT: 372 x 134 mm) and plates/au-nt.yml (NT MVR: 372 x 133 mm); the Tasmanian Registrar publishes no millimetres (recorded gap)"
+      rear_differs: false
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/sr-2021-026  # the Regulations, cited here for the NEGATIVE finding that anchors this series' evidence grade: reg 88(1) empowers the Registrar to assign a 'distinguishing registration number' and prescribes nothing about its composition (accessed 2026-08-02)"
+      - "http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/Tasmania/tasmania.htm  # enthusiast reference (PRD-PLATES §4 corroboration class), accessed 2026-08-02: photo-dated Tasmanian plates from 2016 to 2024 whose serials are consistent with the shape encoded here. Corroborates the SHAPE weakly; dates nothing"
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Tasmania  # secondary (CC BY-SA; facts extracted in our expression per the PRD-PLATES §4 Wikipedia rule), accessed 2026-08-02: the per-state article states in terms 'On 24 February 2008, the Government of Tasmania issued a new registration plate design in the format A 00 AA. After the first letter appears the Tasmanian state logo with the slogan Tasmania - Explore the possibilities', and adds the August 2017 F-to-H block skip with G reserved for Tasmanian government vehicles and Z/Y/X reserved for trailers. Uncited in the article; tagged, not asserted"
+    notes: >-
+      TASMANIA'S CURRENT GENERAL ISSUE. RE-DATED 2013 -> 2008 IN THE COMPLETION
+      PASS OF THIS WAVE, and the reason is worth stating because it is a
+      methodology point, not a fact point: the first pass took its date from the
+      NATIONAL Wikipedia article's summary table (which lists Tasmania against
+      "1970", the year of the PREVIOUS series) and graded it
+      `secondary-locator-unverified`; the PER-STATE article states something
+      much more specific — "On 24 February 2008, the Government of Tasmania
+      issued a new registration plate design in the format A 00 AA" — with the
+      slogan and the state logo in the same sentence. A dated sentence naming
+      the issuing government is a materially better secondary claim than a table
+      cell, so the start moves to 2008 and the tag moves to
+      `secondary-wikipedia` per the §4 Wikipedia rule (tagged, enumerable,
+      reversible). It is STILL NOT PRIMARY: no Tasmanian government page or
+      gazette notice for the change was obtained. Everything about the FORMAT is
+      likewise secondary; the only primary source in the file is the instrument,
+      and the instrument's contribution is a negative one (it proves that no
+      grammar exists in law). THE ID IS UNDATED, for the us-fl-standard reason.
+      WHAT TO
+      CHASE, in order: the Registrar's own plate pages on transport.tas.gov.au
+      (behind Cloudflare; a browser session gets them); the Tasmanian Government
+      Gazette, in which a Registrar's notice about registration numbers would
+      appear if one exists; and TasPlates' underlying API, which necessarily
+      knows the general-issue frame because it must exclude it from
+      owner-chosen combinations.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # ONE SERIES BACK — added in the completion pass, because PRD-PLATES asks for
+  # current plus one back and the first pass authored none. Wholly secondary,
+  # and tagged so.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-tas-standard-2l4n
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 1970, end: 2008 }
+    period_evidence: secondary-wikipedia
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "LL 9999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z]{2} ?\d{4}\z'
+      evidence: secondary
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          Two letters then four numerals. THE FIRST LETTER ONCE CARRIED MEANING
+          AND THEN STOPPED, which is the single most interesting decode fact in
+          Tasmania and the reason this series is worth authoring at all.
+          Reported: from 1970 the series ran AA-0000 to ZB-9999 using "just 12
+          different first letters (one for each month)" — A January, C February,
+          E March, H April, J May, N June, R July, S August, T September, V
+          October, X November, Z December — with A and B the only second letters
+          for buses, cars and trucks, T the second letter for trailers and X the
+          second letter for motorcycles. Then, from 31 December 1971, "this
+          system was abandoned and unused combinations were issued beginning
+          AA-nnnn through to FT-nnnn". So a Tasmanian plate of this shape
+          decodes to a MONTH OF REGISTRATION only if it was issued in the
+          1970-1971 window, and decodes to nothing afterwards. That is exactly
+          the France-SIV trap PRD-PLATES §2.4 warns about — a positional code
+          that stopped meaning what it meant — and it is why no
+          `region_encoding` or month table is attached to this series: a decode
+          table that is right for 23 months and wrong for 37 years would make
+          the parse API lie.
+      progression: "AA-0000 onward after the December 1971 abandonment of the month letters; reported to have reached the DS block by 1998 and the F block by the end of the run"
+    design:
+      colour_note: >-
+        Reported: blue lettering on a white background throughout, with the
+        border and slogan changing rather than the serial colours — "TAS" 1970 to
+        1976, "Tasmania - Holiday Isle" 1976 to 1998, a turquoise border with
+        "Tasmania - Your Natural State" and a thylacine decal from 1998 (opening
+        DS 0000), and a reversion to blue borders in 2004 keeping the other 1998
+        revisions. No Tasmanian government source states any colour and NO HEX IS
+        RECORDED.
+      rear_differs: false
+    region_encoding: >-
+      NONE for practical purposes — see the charset note. The 1970-1971 first
+      letter encoded the MONTH of registration, not a place, and the scheme was
+      abandoned on 31 December 1971. Tasmania has never encoded geography in a
+      registration number.
+    sources:
+      - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Tasmania  # secondary (CC BY-SA; facts in our expression per the PRD-PLATES §4 Wikipedia rule), accessed 2026-08-02: the 1970 AA-0000 to ZB-9999 series, the twelve month letters and their assignments, the second-letter reservations for trailers (T) and motorcycles (X), the 31 December 1971 abandonment, the slogan and border history, and the 2008 replacement. NONE of it carries a footnote in the article"
+      - "http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/Tasmania/tasmania.htm  # enthusiast reference (PRD-PLATES §4 corroboration class), cited in the article and recorded here as the only independent capture of Tasmanian plate shapes; corroborates the SHAPE, dates nothing"
+    notes: >-
+      TASMANIA'S PREVIOUS GENERAL ISSUE, 1970-2008, AND A CAUTION ABOUT WHAT IT
+      IS NOT. It is authored to satisfy the current-plus-one-back requirement and
+      because the two-letter/four-numeral shape is genuinely diagnostic — no
+      other Australian jurisdiction in this wave ran it. Both boundaries are the
+      per-state Wikipedia article's and neither is cited, so the tag is
+      `secondary-wikipedia` end to end; the 2008 end is the same sentence that
+      dates the successor series, so the two boundaries at least fail or succeed
+      together. THE MONTH-LETTER DECODE IS DELIBERATELY NOT MODELLED AS DATA. It
+      is real, it is charming, and it was true for twenty-three months out of a
+      thirty-eight-year run; modelling it would give a consumer a confident
+      wrong answer for 95% of the plates it would fire on. It is recorded in
+      prose in the charset note, which is where a fact that cannot be safely
+      machine-applied belongs.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # SPECIFIC REGISTRATION NUMBERS — Tasmania's personalised regime, which is
+  # in the instrument in full and is the best-sourced thing in this file.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-tas-specific-number
+    class: personalized
+    categories: [car, van, truck, motorcycle, trailer]
+    period: { start: 2021 }        # UPPER BOUND: the current instrument's
+                                   # commencement. The regime is far older.
+    period_evidence: instrument-in-force-upper-bound
+    matching: recall-only
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLLLLL"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z0-9]{1,7}( ?[A-Z0-9]{1,7})?\z'
+      evidence: none
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          Owner-chosen, and the Regulations impose NO length, alphabet or
+          arrangement — the regime is procedural from end to end. What the
+          instrument actually provides, under the heading "Specific registration
+          numbers": "A person may apply to the Registrar to be assigned the
+          rights to a specific registration number", on an approved form; if the
+          Registrar assigns the rights, the Registrar "must issue a personalised
+          number plate bearing the specific registration number, subject to any
+          conditions that the Registrar thinks fit". `matching: recall-only`
+          because the regex is an explicit catch-all over the serial alphabet.
+      refusal_power: "the instrument gives the Registrar an express power to refuse to assign the rights to a specific registration number; the grounds are listed in the regulation and were not transcribed in full in this pass (recorded gap)"
+    fee_mechanism: >-
+      A GENUINELY UNUSUAL PROVISION, worth recording because it is the mirror
+      image of Queensland's. The Tasmanian fee for assigning the rights to a
+      specific registration number is, verbatim, "the fee specified by the
+      organisation that has a contract with the Department to provide the
+      personalised number plate which is to bear the specific registration
+      number", or, where the rights are sold at auction first, "the auction sale
+      amount, providing that sale amount is acceptable to the Registrar", and
+      otherwise "the applicable fee set by the Registrar". So Tasmania
+      incorporates the CONTRACTOR'S price list without naming the contractor,
+      where Queensland's regulation names the contractor's DOMAIN outright
+      (plates/au-qld.yml, reg 2021 s 132(7)). Two States, two different ways of
+      writing a private price list into subordinate legislation.
+    programme:
+      operator: "TasPlates, whose site footer reads 'TM of the Crown in Right of Tasmania' — a State-owned mark operated under contract with the Department, which is exactly the 'organisation that has a contract with the Department' the regulation refers to"
+      catalogue: "TasPlates describes 'over 100 unique personalised number plates' styles; individual designs are L4 scope (PRD-PLATES §2.5) and none is recorded here"
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/sr-2021-026  # the regulations headed 'Specific registration numbers' and 'Using personalised number plates' (accessed 2026-08-02): the application on an approved form, the Registrar's duty to issue the personalised plate subject to conditions, the three-limbed fee provision quoted above, the auction limb and the refusal power"
+      - "https://www.tasplates.com/browse-styles  # TasPlates (accessed 2026-08-02): 'over 100 unique personalised number plates' and the Crown-in-Right-of-Tasmania footer. A JavaScript application — no serial constraint could be extracted (recorded gap)"
+    notes: >-
+      TASMANIAN SPECIFIC REGISTRATION NUMBERS. Modelled as its own series
+      because the serial SOURCE differs (owner-chosen, not Registrar-assigned),
+      and authored despite the empty grammar because the LEGAL machinery is
+      fully sourced and genuinely interesting — particularly the fee provision,
+      which delegates pricing to a contractor's list. `period.start: 2021` is
+      the current instrument's commencement and is an UPPER BOUND only:
+      Tasmania has sold personalised plates for decades under predecessor
+      regulations that were not read in this pass (recorded gap).
+gaps:
+  - "THE ONE-SERIES-BACK REQUIREMENT IS NOT MET FOR TASMANIA, deliberately. No Tasmanian government source describes any previous general issue, and the only available description of one sits in a locator table whose systematic extraction PRD-PLATES §4 forbids. A fabricated predecessor would be worse than an absent one; this is a recorded gap with a clear acceptance test (a Registrar's page, a Gazette notice, or a dated departmental history)"
+  - "No Tasmanian plate dimensions, colours or legends are published by the Registrar — every design claim in this file is either cross-State or secondary"
+  - "The refusal grounds for a specific registration number are in the instrument and were not transcribed in full"
+  - "transport.tas.gov.au (Department of State Growth) returns HTTP 403 to non-browser clients; a verifier with a browser should read its number-plate pages first"

data/data/plates/au-vic.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,215 @@
+# plates/au-vic.yml — Victoria (PRD-PLATES gate L3, Australia).
+#
+# VICTORIA IS THE BEST-EVIDENCED AUSTRALIAN JURISDICTION IN THIS WAVE, and the
+# reason is one page: VicRoads publishes, on its own General issue number plates
+# page, THE FIRST COMBINATION ISSUED IN EACH YEAR — a year-by-year table running
+# from 1960 to the present for cars and trucks and a second one for motorcycles.
+# That is an agency-published series catalogue, which is exactly the artefact
+# every other Australian jurisdiction lacks. It gives us, from the authority:
+#   * the CURRENT car/truck series and its first combination ("1AA.1AA"),
+#     with the month it started (08/2013) and the month the previous series
+#     stopped (01/2013, at "ZSA 000");
+#   * the CURRENT motorcycle series and its first combination ("1A.1AA"), whose
+#     table row is 2011;
+#   * the colour history, in the agency's own three lines (below);
+#   * one genuinely out-of-sequence block, which VicRoads flags itself.
+# Every period in this file is therefore `agency-stated-date` or
+# `agency-series-catalogue`, and none is folklore.
+#
+# THE STRUCTURAL AUSTRALIAN FACT STILL HOLDS HERE: the Road Safety (Vehicles)
+# Regulations 2021 (Vic) do not carry a serial grammar either — no Australian
+# registration regulation does (see the header of plates/au-tas.yml, which
+# quotes the empowering words). What Victoria has is not a better LAW, it is a
+# better AGENCY PAGE. Recorded that way.
+#
+# SEPARATOR NOTE (PRD-PLATES §2.6): a Victorian plate prints a RAISED DOT
+# between the two groups, and VicRoads itself writes the combination both ways
+# on the same page — "1AA.1AA" in the prose, "1AA 1AA" in the table. Neither
+# glyph is serial-significant: the dot is the printed group separator and the
+# dataset spells it as the emitted SPACE, per §2.6 rule 2. A consumer's
+# forgiving tier already deletes FULL STOP (U+002E), so "1AA.1AA" canonicalises
+# correctly with no amendment needed.
+jurisdiction: au-vic
+authority:
+  name: VicRoads (Department of Transport and Planning, Victoria)
+  url: "https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/number-plates"
+binding: vehicle
+instrument:
+  citation: "Road Safety (Vehicles) Regulations 2021 (Vic), made under the Road Safety Act 1986 (Vic)"
+  access_note: >-
+    legislation.vic.gov.au serves the instrument and was reachable in this pass,
+    but NO PROVISION OF IT IS QUOTED HERE, because the provisions that would
+    matter (a serial grammar, a colour spec, a plate dimension) do not exist in
+    it — the Australian pattern. The Victorian display rules were therefore not
+    re-derived from the Regulations at this gate and are a recorded gap; the
+    Queensland and Tasmanian files carry the equivalent rules verbatim from
+    their own instruments, and Victoria's are understood to be materially the
+    same, which is an EXPECTATION, not a claim, and is not encoded.
+  licence: "legislation.vic.gov.au publishes Victorian legislation; VicRoads pages are Victorian Crown copyright. Facts extracted, text quoted only where marked verbatim (PRD-PLATES §4)"
+
+national_schemes:
+  heavy_vehicle: >-
+    Heavy vehicles over 4.5 t GVM are registered under the Heavy Vehicle
+    National Law as applied in Victoria and carry a NATIONAL HEAVY VEHICLE
+    NUMBER PLATE issued by the State registrar on the national pattern. This is
+    a mechanism note, not a series: the national heavy-vehicle serial grammar
+    was not obtained from the NHVR or any State instrument in this pass
+    (recorded gap, L4). Three State instruments name the object in those words
+    — Qld reg 2021 s 117(2)(c), Tas reg 2021 reg 88(6), NT Motor Vehicles
+    Regulations 1977 reg 10.
+  light_vehicle_standards: >-
+    Australian Light Vehicle Standards Rules 2015 (national MODEL law,
+    Parliamentary Counsel's Committee, consolidated 22 March 2019) rule 86,
+    verbatim: "At least 1 number plate light must be fitted to the rear of a
+    vehicle" and it must illuminate the plate "so the characters on the number
+    plate can be read at night 20 metres from the rear of the vehicle". The
+    Rules disclaim legal effect of themselves. They prescribe NO plate
+    dimension, colour or serial grammar — there is no national plate standard
+    in Australia.
+  ev_labels: >-
+    Victoria issues NUMBER PLATE LABELS for electric and hydrogen vehicles —
+    labels fixed to the plate, not a plate series — which is the Australian
+    Light Vehicle Standards Rules 2015 Part 12 labelling family (rules 143-144A
+    require LPG, natural-gas and hydrogen labels "fixed conspicuously to its
+    front and rear number plates"). Recorded as a mechanism; no series.
+  source: "https://www.pcc.gov.au/uniform/Australian%20Light%20Vehicle%20Standards%20Rules%202015%20-%2022%20March%202019.pdf  # ALVSR 2015 rule 86 and rules 143-144A, accessed 2026-08-02"
+
+series:
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # CURRENT GENERAL ISSUE — cars and trucks.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-vic-standard
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 2013 }        # VicRoads' own year table: 08/2013 -> 1AA 1AA
+    period_evidence: agency-stated-date
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "9LL 9LL"
+      regex: '\A\d[A-Z]{2} ?\d[A-Z]{2}\z'
+      evidence: agency
+      charset:
+        notes: >-
+          VicRoads, verbatim: "The current general issue plate series includes:
+          a registration number starting from 1AA.1AA". Numeral, two letters,
+          numeral, two letters — six characters in two printed groups of three.
+          NO LETTER OR DIGIT EXCLUSIONS ARE PUBLISHED by VicRoads, so no
+          `regex_strict` is written; the widely repeated claim that Victoria
+          skips 0 in the first and fourth positions is UNSOURCED and is
+          deliberately NOT encoded (see notes).
+      progression: "ascending; VicRoads' own table shows the leading digit block advancing slowly (1AA 1AA in 08/2013, 1BA 1AA in 2014, 1DX 6UF in 2015, 1GP 4AA in 2016), so the leading numeral is a series marker with decades of headroom"
+    design:
+      background: { color: "#FFFFFF", finish: retroreflective, hex_basis: observed }
+      foreground_note: >-
+        VicRoads, verbatim: "blue characters on a white reflective background".
+        The white is recorded as a hex with `hex_basis: observed`; THE BLUE IS
+        NOT — VicRoads names the colour and never specifies it, and inventing a
+        blue would be exactly the fabricated-fact failure PRD-PLATES §9 warns
+        about. A `foreground` hex lands when a Victorian specification does.
+      colour_history: >-
+        VicRoads' own three lines, verbatim: "1960 - 1977: Black background,
+        white characters" / "1978 - 1994: White background, green characters" /
+        "1995 - current: White background, blue characters". Note the boundaries
+        are COLOUR boundaries, not series boundaries — the 1995 blue arrived
+        mid-way through the three-letter series and did not start a new one,
+        which is why colour is recorded on the series rather than used to cut it.
+      legend_bottom: "the current State slogan, printed centre-bottom"
+      legend_rule: "VicRoads, verbatim: 'the current slogan printed on the centre bottom of the plate (not included on slimline)'. The slogan is a VARIABLE of the design — Victoria has changed it by policy several times — and the current text is deliberately not hard-coded here"
+      plate: { w: 372, h: 134, unit: mm }
+      plate_dimension_note: "the Australian passenger size; VicRoads does not publish its own millimetres, so this is the cross-State figure sourced in plates/au-wa.yml (WA DoT: 372 x 134 mm) and plates/au-nt.yml (NT MVR: 372 x 133 mm), flagged as such"
+      slimline_variant: "VicRoads offers a slimline plate, on which the slogan is omitted — a design variant of this series, not a series of its own (PRD-PLATES §2.3)"
+      rear_differs: false
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/number-plates/standard-number-plates/general-issue-number-plates  # VicRoads 'General issue number plates', read via the Internet Archive snapshot of 2018-07-02 (the live host 403s to non-browser clients), accessed 2026-08-02: 'a registration number starting from 1AA.1AA'; 'blue characters on a white reflective background'; the slogan rule and the slimline exception; the year-by-year first-combination table whose row 08/2013 is '1AA 1AA' and whose row 01/2013 is 'ZSA 000'; the three colour-era lines"
+    notes: >-
+      VICTORIA'S CURRENT GENERAL ISSUE, AGENCY-DATED TO THE MONTH. The
+      changeover is unusually well evidenced for Australia: VicRoads' table
+      shows 01/2013 as the last three-letter row ("ZSA 000") and 08/2013 as the
+      first row of this series ("1AA 1AA"), so the transition is bracketed by
+      the agency itself and `period.start: 2013` is a real claim rather than a
+      locator's guess. FOLKLORE FLAGGED AND NOT ENCODED: the claim repeated
+      across the enthusiast web and the plate-parsing corpora that Victoria
+      excludes the digit 0 from the first and fourth positions is not stated by
+      VicRoads anywhere on the page that states everything else about this
+      series — if it were true, it would be a `regex_strict`, and its absence
+      here is a deliberate refusal, not an oversight. The evidence VicRoads DOES
+      give cuts slightly against it being a hard rule at the fourth position and
+      says nothing either way; a verifier with a Victorian registration corpus
+      can settle it in minutes, and that is the right way to settle it.
+      SNAPSHOT CAVEAT: the page was read from a 2018 archive because the live
+      host blocks machine clients; the series it describes is still the current
+      one (the leading numeral is 1, and VicRoads' progression shows it moving
+      at roughly one letter-block per year), but the table's later rows are not
+      in evidence here and the file therefore makes no claim about which block
+      is in issue today.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # ONE SERIES BACK — cars and trucks.
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-vic-standard-3l3n
+    class: standard
+    categories: [car, van, truck, bus]
+    period: { start: 1960, end: 2013 }
+    period_evidence: agency-series-catalogue
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "LLL 999"
+      regex: '\A[A-Z]{3} ?\d{3}\z'
+      evidence: agency
+      charset: { notes: "three letters then three numerals. The arrangement is read off VicRoads' own year table, every row of which from 1960 to 01/2013 is of this shape (HCK 620, ARN 000, QAU 000, ZSA 000, ...)" }
+      progression: "ascending through the three-letter block; VicRoads' table gives the first combination issued in each calendar year, which makes this the only Australian series in the wave with an agency-published year-to-serial map"
+    design:
+      colour_history: "VicRoads, verbatim: '1960 - 1977: Black background, white characters'; '1978 - 1994: White background, green characters'; '1995 - current: White background, blue characters'. This series spans all three eras"
+      out_of_sequence_block: "VicRoads flags one exception in its own words, verbatim: 'Note: The number plate series of RAA.000 to RBZ.999 was issued out of sequence and were green characters on a white background.' An agency-declared out-of-sequence block is a genuinely useful parse fact and is recorded rather than smoothed away"
+      plate: { w: 372, h: 134, unit: mm }
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/number-plates/standard-number-plates/general-issue-number-plates  # VicRoads (Internet Archive snapshot 2018-07-02, accessed 2026-08-02): the year-by-year first-combination table from 1960 (HCK 620) to 01/2013 (ZSA 000); the three colour-era lines; the RAA.000-RBZ.999 out-of-sequence note verbatim"
+    notes: >-
+      THE PREVIOUS VICTORIAN GENERAL ISSUE. `period.start: 1960` IS AN UPPER
+      BOUND AND IS LABELLED AS ONE: 1960 is simply the first row of VicRoads'
+      table, and the three-letter series demonstrably predates it (the 1960 row
+      already reads "HCK 620", deep inside the H block). The series' true start
+      is earlier and is a recorded gap; what the agency evidences is that this
+      shape was in issue from at least 1960. `period.end: 2013` is a real
+      agency-bracketed claim (last row 01/2013). The RAA-RBZ out-of-sequence
+      block is the kind of fact no competing dataset carries and it comes
+      straight from the registrar.
+
+  # =========================================================================
+  # MOTORCYCLES — a separate series because the ARRANGEMENT differs, not just
+  # the size (PRD-PLATES §2.3: own series iff format OR design OR period).
+  # =========================================================================
+  - id: au-vic-motorcycle
+    class: motorcycle
+    categories: [motorcycle]
+    period: { start: 2011 }        # VicRoads' motorcycle table: 2011 -> 1A 1AA
+    period_evidence: agency-stated-date
+    matching: strict
+    format:
+      pattern: "9L 9LL"
+      regex: '\A\d[A-Z] ?\d[A-Z]{2}\z'
+      evidence: agency
+      charset: { notes: "VicRoads, verbatim: 'The current general issue motorcycle plate series includes: a registration number starting from 1A.1AA'. Five characters — numeral, letter, numeral, two letters — printed in two groups. Shorter than the car series because the plate is smaller" }
+    design:
+      foreground_note: "VicRoads, verbatim: 'blue characters on a white reflective background'"
+      background: { color: "#FFFFFF", finish: retroreflective, hex_basis: observed }
+      legend: "VIC"
+      legend_rule: "VicRoads, verbatim: 'the “VIC” slogan printed on the plate' — the motorcycle plate carries the abbreviation, not the full State slogan, because there is no room"
+      rear_differs: false
+    display: "VicRoads, verbatim: 'Motorcycles are only issued with one plate.'"
+    predecessor: "the previous motorcycle series was two letters then three numerals (VicRoads' motorcycle table, every row from 1960 'CO 026' to 2010 'JA 000'); it is NOT authored as its own series here because the lean scope for this gate is current + one back on the STANDARD line, and the motorcycle predecessor adds a fourth series to a file that already carries the evidence for it in this field (recorded, not padded)"
+    region_encoding: none
+    sources:
+      - "https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/number-plates/standard-number-plates/general-issue-number-plates  # VicRoads (Internet Archive snapshot 2018-07-02, accessed 2026-08-02): the motorcycle series 'starting from 1A.1AA', the VIC slogan, the one-plate rule, and the motorcycle year table whose 2011 row is '1A 1AA' and whose 2010 row is 'JA 000'"
+    notes: >-
+      VICTORIAN MOTORCYCLE GENERAL ISSUE, AND THE DATE IS THE AGENCY'S: the
+      motorcycle table's 2011 row is the first "1A 1AA"-shaped entry and 2010 is
+      the last two-letter one ("JA 000"), so the motorcycle line changed over
+      TWO YEARS BEFORE the car line did (2011 vs 08/2013). That asymmetry is the
+      point of modelling motorcycles as their own series rather than as a size
+      variant: in Victoria they are a separate allocation stream with a separate
+      grammar and a separate changeover date, and a parser that treats a
+      motorcycle plate as a short car plate will mis-date it by two years.