1. A method for identifying characters on license plates of a vehicle on a roadway said method comprising: a) acquiring a plurality of images of the vehicle said images including the license plate area, b) grouping images that are determined to be of the same vehicle, the determination based upon image features of the vehicle that do not include recognition of the characters on the vehicle's license plate, c) analyzing a single image from the grouped image to recognize the characters of the license plate, d) assigning the recognized characters from the single image to all images of the grouped images.