This isn't unique to TfL, you can look up registration numbers and get vehicle details on other sites too, eBay Motors for example.

Probably too many bots running on it.

Will try to run mine later.

...the car registration you decide to hack is owned by "the next Alexander Litvinenko" for instance, you might get a bit more attention from other sources than you perhaps bargained for.

Looking at the damn car yourself whilst driving down the road.

Erm, it's not hard to find a reg of a black porsche now is it or any other car for that matter (perhaps a delorean might be hard to get hold of)

Slim

It will generate some false positives- eg if I put in the license numbers of the last two vehicles I've had written off, they would still appear to exist. <Insert some mandatory comment about just checking in the post for every license number ever on a handy CD-ROM here>

if you use the database instead of driving around you save a lot of co2miles :)

Details of vehicles have been removed from the site now.

This isn't a TfL innovation. The Government have been publishing details of our vehicles on the web for quite a while now. Go to http://www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/ and click the "vehicle enquiry" option in the menu.

It will tell you lots of useful stuff, including whether the vehicle is licensed, which is very handy as then you know you won't get pulled in an ANPR tax disc check.

Or you could just do as some thieving pikeys did to me - unscrew the plates from the matching vehicle, fit them to your chavmobile, and then fill up with petrol at my local station and drive off without paying!

even provides a handy manufacturer / model / colour matching service - just find the ones with the pictures and often enough the plates are there for all to see.

Then use the handy DVLA lookup to check that its got a valid RFL and your sorted.

What could be easier.

IT? - beats all that leg work and you can do it at work

for the "good old days" when the only people who could do all this were the plods!

And don't get me started on the latest parking 'Laws'

Mines the one with the blood pressure medication in the pockets...

I put in the reg of my dads car which he purchased in 1969 and it came back with the correct details.

The DVLA site says it was last reg'd in 1982 - what a waste of processing power

...doesn't seem to be regged anymore :-(

...someone did this, and their car got crushed cos they'd cloned the plate of someone with £5000 outstanding fines?