Detailed Information on Publication Record

Every vehicle manufactured after year 1986 is obligatorily marked with a VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), which is unique worldwide. This is the so-called individual vehicle identification, which is normally used as the primary information key in various computer registers, vehicle information systems—in the national vehicle register, in the police information systems (national and transnational databases of stolen vehicles, etc.), insurance companies, leasing companies, in eCALL technology (emergency call technology—implemented 2 years ago across all European countries for all new vehicles produced or imported to EU), etc. Any error in the VIN identifier means that the vehicle is then not found in the relevant informa-tion system and “looks” that everything is OK. But the reality is different. In national and international vehicle registers, the error rate ranges from 5 to 20%. Most errors in VIN arise in manual processes of rewriting, manual copying VIN from documents into information systems. These information systems are either in the competence of state, government or commercial entities. Especially sensitive to errors in VIN are all processes of forensic identification of vehicles, processes related to rescue service activities in the event of a vehicle accident, in the investigation of fraud and theft of vehicles by police and insurance units, The paper is based on five-year research and analysis of information systems during years 2014–2019. The paper deals with the anatomy of VIN errors in various processes and offers possibilities of their elimination and significant improvement of information systems containing VIN identifier. The errors in the VIN are categorized into several categories. For each category are listed its specificities.