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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, Interesting) by CCTalbert on Monday May 18 2020, @03:02PM (2 children)
One might be under the impression that the intent of a license plate is to provide an easily used unique ID for each motor vehicle.
That would be incorrect.
The purpose of a license plate is to act as a visible receipt showing you've paid your personal property taxes, and to provide an easy way to identify those that haven't so they can be acted against. It's just a tax receipt. From the tax assessors perspective it's really not critical that it's unique, or easily read, etc. They're only concern is that it's visibly apparent if someone hasn't paid.
A vehicles license being used for ID, for law enforcement purposes, toll charges, etc., is like your social security number being used to identify you. BUT, in the case of SS, at least you're assured that numbers are unique. (and even then it's for the SS administration purposes, not because they realized that the number would be used for ID and other purposes)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 18 2020, @03:32PM
For that matter, it used to be illegal to use the SSN for identification purposes. People started doing it anyway, and I think they changed the law.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday May 18 2020, @08:26PM
A license plate is something Mexicans steal to commit crimes in situations where they're unable to steal your whole car. I don't know about New England Jews (apparantly no property theft has to happen to get Jewed by their system) but we on Mexican border cities suffer that fate on a regular basis. Kinda makes me want to hone my plates to a razor's edge before installing them on my car.