A new-to-me game for long car journeys

Turning over the pages of reference 2 during an advertisement break on ITV3, breaks which seem to be at least five minutes out of every twenty, a book first read during the jigsaw era and noticed, for example, at references 3 and 4, I learned of a new game to play on long car journeys. A game which can be played with one, two or more players.

All one has to do is spot cars with the next number. So you start by looking for a car with numeric part '1', then '2' and so on. It might have been that in the days when Drabble was playing this game you only had the sort of number plates which consisted of a group of one or more letters followed by a group of one or more digits. Leading zeroes probably not allowed.

Since then, and I have not read reference 1 carefully, there have been a number of different formats, but I think there has always been just one numeric group, possibly including leading zeroes, which can be disregarded.

So the game can still be played, although given the prevalence of two digits, it might take a while to get to the near 300 that Drabble usually achieved.

Note that there is no 'banking'. If you are on 54 and you see 56 then 55, the 56 is no good at all. You have to wait until you see another one. 

Various rules are possible for the multi-player version of the game. One might take it strictly in turns. Or it might just be whoever sees the next number first, perhaps scoring one on each such occasion, with the winner being the one with the biggest score at the end of the journey. Or two people might play remotely, liaising by text or telephone to see how the other one is getting on. And so on and so forth.

Pity I did not know about when when the children were young. As it was we used to do posh car spotting. First one to spot a rollers or a red jag sort of thing.

PS: I know from Maigret, that in France number plates are called 'plaques minéralogiques' or less quaintly 'plaques d'immatriculation'. The former on account of the responsible government department being or having been mines. Which is all Larousse tells me. But it may be relevant that the Corps des mines is an important outfit in France, doing a lot more than mines. See reference 5, or reference 6 for a slightly longer version.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_United_Kingdom.

Reference 2: The Pattern on the Carpet: a personal history with jigsaws - Margaret Drabble - 2009.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/06/gustatory-affairs.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/06/puzzle-13.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_des_mines.

Reference 6: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_des_mines.