DESIGNS AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTERIZED MOTOR VEHICLE NATIONAL PLATE NUMBER GENERATION SYSTEM

Thesis Overview

INTRODUCTIONMotor vehicle national plate numbering which involves registration of vehicles as part of its process is the allocation of an identification mark to a vehicle by serially numbering of motor vehicles. As much as there is need for sanity to be maintained on roads, motor vehicle national plate numbering becomes of necessity in traffic matters for identification purpose.In as much as motor vehicle national plate numbering has been in existence for ages now, the old system of numbering had been in adoption which did not play a significant role highway safety until the development of the new system of plate numbering where a reflective sheeting which is more visible to read even in the dark, special alphabetic codes are allocated to each vehicle which distinguishes the vehicle from any other vehicle throughout the whole federation, thereby creating some measure of uniqueness in such vehicle.This new system of national plate numbering which is the central focus of this write up came into effect from 16th January 1993 and handled by federal Road Safety Commission. It is introduced to enforce strict compliance to traffic rules and regulations as well as providing a proper data as to the behaviour of road users. In other words, this national plate numbering is designed to identify a particular vehicle to the rightful owner making the identification of such vehicle easy.Motor vehicle national plate numbering is done by 2 government offices namely: Local government motor licensing offices for personal vehicles and cabinet office or any military established offices.In personal vehicle, suffix codes, codes administered to vehicle plates owned by individuals help in identifying the local government where such vehicle was registered, also that particular code cannot tally with that of any others local government throughout to register up to two million vehicle before the code exhausts.Since motor vehicle plate numbering is absolutely essential in traffic matters, it is vital to absolutely and sustain an information system using a reliable device like computer system in oft to provide and maintain proper data /records concerning the road users in this aspect of traffic function. This is achieved by writing a software that can be able to carry out this operation, which is the prospect of this study, thus computerization of this traffic service becomes of necessity to enhance the work.1.1   STATEMENT OF PROBLEM Due to limitation of human effort and potentials, application of manual system in motor vehicle, national plate numbering has posed some problems and threats to the work which can go a long way in been eliminated through computerization of the process. These problems are:I.      Participation Of Unauthorized Officers: Unauthorized officers according to my observations are involved in this work especially in the sale of plate numbers, which can encourage frand..II.   Wrong charging of fees:  The officers in charge are bound to charge wrongly to vehicle owners, which may be as a result of under assessment or over-assessment of the vehicle. This could be with a motive to commit frand or as a result of mistake on the part of the officer at work.iii Wrong sales Location:        Staff under a particular local government motors licensing office indulge in selling of motor vehicle plate numbers that does not bear their code thus does not  belong to them. This is to the detriment of the purpose for which each local government was assigned a code, which is to identify the local government a vehicle was registered.iv.    Improper Accounting:  There is the tendency of the cashier involved in the handling of income generated to make mistake during this process, thus having some measures of inaccuracy in the work.V.     Hard retrieval of Information: There is difficulty a time in tracing a record/information concerning a vehicle owner due to improper information keeping as a result of carelessness or volume in the size of record kept.1.2   PURPOSE OF STUDYSince motor vehicle national plate number is very important in providing sanity on road and yielding revenue for the government, I considered it very crucial to know and critically analysis the manual procedure involved in motor vehicle national plate numbering generation such as registration, which is the process taken before attaching the plate number, analyzing the code and their significance, looking into the procedure of checking revenue generated in motor vehicle national plate numbering together with the problems faced by the department that is in charge.Besides, in as much as this problem surfaces in this manual, operation, I intend to carve out a technique which will serve as a means of providing solution to the problems. These are the purpose of this study.1.3   AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDYAs we have seen from the statement of the problems the things that stand as puzzle in the manual system of operation in motor vehicle national plate numbering, this research work aims at introducing a better system  and this system is the computerized system which will contribute in providing solution to the problems in the following ways.I.      Restriction of illegal access:  The number of people that will have access to this program will be limited by creating a password for the application software. This password will just be limited to the officer in charge of the work and as well restrict any initialing unauthorized officer from having access to the work with the permission of the person in-charge. This will help in minimizing frand committed as a result of thisii.     Automatic assigning of fees:Since each vehicle is charged based in the amount it that is both ordinary, special or titled plate numbering and the category of vehicle, if the vehicle is. This work aims at automatic assigning of the correct amount once the above-mentioned assessment is done this preventing the error of wrong assessment.iii.    Proper Accounting:This also aims at giving an up-to date report of the revenue generated from national plate numbering within a defined period and also the number of vehicle that has been registered.iv.    Easy Retrieval of Information:Finally, this work will help I using the national plate number of a particular vehicle to call up the information record concerning the owner of the vehicle.1.4      SCOPE OF STUDYMotor vehicle national plate numbering, since it is done in two different offices namely: Local government motor licensing offices and cabinet office, and having used motor licensing officer.