A method and system for achieving accurate segmentation of characters with respect to a license plate image within a tight bounding box image. A vehicle image can be captured by an image capturing unit and processed utilizing an ALPR unit. A vertical projection histogram can be calculated to produce an initial character boundary (cuts) and local statistical information can be employed to split a large cut and insert a missing character. The cut can be classified as a valid and/or a suspect character and the suspect character can be analyzed. The suspect character can be normalized and passed to an OCR module for decoding and generating a confidence quote with every conclusion. The non-character images can be rejected at the OCR level by enforcing a confidence threshold. An adjoining suspect narrow character can be combined and the OCR confidence of the combined character can be assessed.