If you ever thought about getting a funny vanity plate to try to mess with traffic cops, this video may have you thinking twice about that.

A tech worker in California once thought he could game the system by getting license plates that read NULL and VOID. His idea was that license plate registration systems wouldn't be able to find his car if he ever broke a traffic law, because scanning his plates would cause the system to malfunction.

He was right in thinking the system would malfunction, but it also backfired. Instead of simply not being able to locate his vehicle, the system started sending him tickets for any traffic violations where the officer didn't input any license info.

Those cases had always been marked NULL, but now that someone was actually registered as NULL, the tickets had a place to go. He received $12k worth of citations before finally changing his plates and resolving the issue.

For even more spectacular tech fails, click here.