Steve W - You are spot on , I am an assessment officer and trainer & I find (on a daily basis) that our people in Queensland Australia (ie licenced personnel) do not refer to the data plate & tend to operate by the seat of their pants.
Things are about to change for the better though with a change of our governing body.
Our old administration body was only interested in training at an arms length basis & created too many assessment providers (700 or so) to do their assessments, many of whom did not do their job conscientously and have been weeded out leaving aprox 300.
This has led to lesser skilled operators training & supervising in our workplaces.
To assist me in gaining a bigger picture on the subject could you and other readers please E-mail me a copy of your national data plates from around the world so that I can maybe draw attention to the inadequacies of our present system.
My contact is graham @whandss.com