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Hank Investigates: Incorrectly Charged for EZPass Tolls:
Cynthia's red four-door sits in her Concord driveway. Exactly where it's been for weeks.
[...] "We were following the governor's order and we were not leaving," Cynthia said.
So when Cynthia got her April EZ Pass bill she was baffled. It said her car went through tolls in New York, a COVID hot spot.
[...] She was billed for 60 different tolls with charges totaling more than 600 dollars.
"It said we were on the Bronx, Whitestone Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge, and the RFK Bridge in New York City.
I'd never been on those bridges," Cynthia said.
Not a chance her car was in New York. She says she spent hours on the phone with EZ Pass trying to get the errors fixed.
[...] What happened? We found Cynthia's toll trouble is because of the way Massachusetts issues license plates—and a glitch in the EZ Pass system.
The problem is Massachusetts, one of the 17 states connected in the system, uses the same numbers on different types of plates. For example, there could be Mass passenger 1234, but also commercial 1234, Cape and Island 1234, Red Sox, Purple Heart, and more.
When a special plate like that gets an electronic toll, cameras snap a photo of it, and then it’s looked up in the EZ Pass shared system so the car can be charged.
But we found those files do not provide “plate type” information! So if commercial 1234, for instance, goes through, passenger 1234 could get the bill.
How in the world did anyone thing that giving the same license plate number to multiple vehicles was a good idea?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @11:55AM (2 children)
> Why is the burden of proof for these fines so squarely on the accused?
My guess, people in general (and/or people in power) believe that "the computer" is always right. Anyone want to chime in on how we got to this place?
If grade schools had programming classes for everyone (even something very simple) that might eventually change this belief(??)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @02:15PM (1 child)
I think the classic sci-fi "short story" Computers Don't Argue [atariarchives.org] explains it pretty well. It's absurd, but you know that is going to happen someday. Someone will be executed because of computer error.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @02:29PM
I'd forgotten "Computers Don't Argue", thanks for that link.
We've gotten much better at these things in the last 50 odd years...now we have Swatting, much quicker, no need for all that correspondence (yes, this is sarcasm).