Student daubs fake 'mud' on number plates in attempt to fool Spanish city's new low emission zone cameras

Drivers have been coming up with all sorts of strategies to evade the new low emission zone (ZBE) regulations for polluting vehicles in large towns and cities in Spain. Two weeks ago, the Local Police in Granada caught a woman who had hidden her car's number plate with duct tape, because she was not sure whether she could enter the city's low emission zone.

Her ploy, however, has been surpassed by the imagination of a student from Madrid. It looked like mud was obscuring both number plates of his car. However, the Local Police, who shared the incident on social media, discovered that it was not mud that had gotten there accidentally but clay that had been daubed on. It was an intentional masking of the number plates in order to be able to enter the low emission zone without being penalised.

This has ended up costing the student more than a ZBE fine, as the police fined him 6,000 euros and took six points off his driving licence.