Posted on 03/06/2011 3:35:10 AM PST by rawhide
Meet Joel Chandler,who just paid his $1.00 toll on the Polk Parkway with a $100 bill,he is not allowed to leave unless he provides personal info to the toll taker.The toll taker tells Chandler this is what happens when they get large bills.
Chandler says to the toll taker,"So I'm being detained?"She says yes sir.
It is a policy the Florida Turnpike authority instituted for people who paid with $20,$50 or$100 bills. After it happened once,Chandler kept testing the system and taped his encounters as he went through the toll booths.
One time a toll taker told him, she wouldn't give him his change unless he gave her the information. He asked why he was being detained but never got an answer.
When Chandler called and e-mailed the Florida Department of Transportation to complain about the policy, he was told there is no policy to detain people who give large bills.
The practice continued at toll booth after toll booth and, if someone refused to provide the information, they were threatened with arrest. One toll taker told Chandler's brother Robert, "I could call FHP. Would you like me to do that, sir?" Robert Chandler asked why she would call the Florida Highway Patrol when he was being illegally detained and the toll taker said he could come up with another form of tender.
Chandler continued to complain and on July 21st at 7:19 p.m., he received an email from the assistant General Counsel of FDOT saying essentially the department didn't know what he was talking about and they don't have sufficient information to investigate. However, earlier that same day, there were a flurry of e-mails going back and forth in the department saying shut the program down, temporarily suspend it and who should call Chandler and what should they say.
(Excerpt) Read more at wtsp.com ...
I have a dumb phone, no GPS. If I did have a phone with GPS, it would be turned off, as I have a much better and bigger GPS unit on my windshield.
They don’t take credit cards. If you make the mistake of getting on a toll road without any cash, you’re screwed. You have to stop at a booth and tell them your situation, and then they give you an address to send the toll to to prevent getting a much larger bill. You have to send cash or check.
I was just on that road last week. If only I had known how much fun I could have had if only I had tried to pay with a $100 bill.
The letter was from by license plate, I didnt have an e-pass at that time.
More evidence of the need for far fewer public “servants.”
Something about “legal tender for all debts, public and private”. What part of “all” do you not understand?
Take a picture of a dollar bill and send it back to them.
.
I’m more pissed at the corruption involved with our toll roads.
I think they can still triangulate on a regular cell phone and determine location of the cell phone, in some areas at least. Ever heard of that?
Another reason to dispense with these overpaid glorified cashiers.
TX DOT Spent at least 30K to build a toll booth west of the Taylor Texas Airport to try to figure out how to position cameras to beat the toll booth runners who have figured out how to “train” through booths.
It is pretty funny, vehicles toting UHAUL trailers spend all day driving through the booth.
NJ did ticket on turnpike by time of entrance to time of departure in the early 50’s. I had a cousin in the Air Force stationed at Stuart {sp} AFB near Newburgh NY. He traveled a good bit as he was in charge of food inspectors for supplies purchased by military in that region, also base Vet. He drove very fast and always threw entry ticket away and paid for travel to longest point of travel. Also did a lot of hops one refueling from SAFB, and back and forth to Alabama.
just get an att phone they’ll never find ya. of course you can’t call anyone either.
It is illegal according to Federal law not to accept his bills no matter what the size. Written right on every bill are these words, “legal tender for all debts public and private.”
Anyone who lived in the NY/NJ area in the pre-EZPass era knows that the toll workers were always a bottleneck on the highways.
I despise EZPass because it made taxation simple, easy and efficient, like payroll deductions.
However, not having an EZPass is crazy if you travel these roads frequently.
I would prefer a focus on eliminating toll roads.
We pay enough in fuel taxes that our roads and bridges should be world-class!
It doesn’t matter if you have GPS in your phone. I worked as a contractor to BellSouth Mobility in mid 90’s on a system that would track a phone by cell tower if the phone was turned on. Not as accurate as GPS but it could tell you a lot about where people were going and what cities they went visited.
Returning to the Denver Airport I mistakenly exited prematurely without paying, realized my mistake and informed the agent at the next exit so I could pay it. He refused and told me, for some odd reason that this was done when I returned my rental car; at Budget, they said they knew nothing about it, and only provided me with an (800) number to call. Long story short, after returning home I wound up having to pay $8.00- 8x the toll.
In our wonderful State of Illinois (NOT) they’ve doubled the cost when passing through a toll if you have cash vs going through with an I-Pass.
Pretty effective way of promoting the I-Pass.
Your phone can be used to track you whether you want it to or not. Quite deliberately, the only way you can reliably turn off that ability is to turn off your phone and remove the battery. Here is a link and an excerpt of an article explaining it:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5291861_pros-tracking-devices-cellular-phones.html
Since the mid 2000s, the vast majority of cell phones manufactured and sold in the United States have included tracking capabilities. This is the result of legislation passed after the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washing ton, D.C. and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated that all cell phones must have this capability in order to make it possible to trace emergency calls. However, the result of this legislation has had consequences far beyond its intended purpose, with both good and bad effects.
How Personal Tracking Works With Cell Phones
1. Tracking someone using a cell phone works in much the same way as a Global Positioning System (GPS) device. The person's location is calculated in relationship to the known locations of a given provider's cell phone towers or GPS satellites. This can be accomplished with a high degree of accuracy, within several feet. This is true whether the phone has specialized GPS technology installed or not. Since most people carry their cell phones with them and leave them on most if not all the time, using a cell phone as a personal tracking device can be very reliable.
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