This is a very dangerous way of thinking. You cannot tell at the time of discovery if specific research will be useful or not down the line. You need to advance the research in all directions, even if some of them seem silly or useless, or else you will handicap your progress in other fields which you didn’t see the connection with at first.

It’s the other way around, you will get all of the tickets which are missing plate info. Some guy did it and regrets it, there is a documentary about it.