BULL$}{!T !!!
It's ALL about the money !!!
We already pay for roads via the Taxes on fuel 
and Tags (some states are charging hundreds for Tags by adding Bridge and Road fees and School District fees.)
Posted on 03/10/2024 9:19:21 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Officials look to crack down on James Bond-style tag flippers, other means to obstruct license plates; ‘This is about fairness’
Mechanical devices that can hide a driver’s tag at the push of a button are sold online for a couple hundred bucks. Other drivers are getting creative on the cheap, jury-rigging their plates with face masks or duct tape.
Some drivers have power-washed paint off their plates or covered them with a range of household items such as leaf-shaped magnets
“Our Motorized Stealth Plate Flippers, allows you to flip your license plates 180°, James Bond style!”
New York State Thruway cameras recorded a motorcyclist reaching around to cover his bike’s license plate and spotted a car whizzing by with a Cheetos bag taped over the Florida-issued tag.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The only toll road I approved of was beltway 8 in Houston. Yes the speedlimit was 65 but was never enforced. You could run 85-90 mph and never get stopped for speeding and that was in the daytime. At night getting off work at 3am you could run over a hundred, no problem. They had a bilboard advertising a saying about “let us introduce to you that thing on the right” and showed a picture of the accelerator.
“There should be no toll roads anywhere.”
I see people all over so-called conservative sites advocating for more of them. Reminds me of the “infrastructure” bills the Democrats pass whenever they get back in power. All those “roads and bridges” we get.
Number of cars times toll amount = income. Income minus expenses = profit. Tge largest cost of any enterprise is manpower and or womanpower. You can cut expenses immensely by eliminating the people. Then there is the cost of energy for maintaining comfortable toll booths. They are only complaining now because the people who usually pay are tired of seeing the lawless evade paying. Defunding the police is the first step to a lawless society. People don’t stop at stop signs any more and they run red lights and speed and weave in and out of traffic. The only vehicles that get pulled over are semi trucks because they are easy targets and cooperative. You never see a semi truck in a high speed chase.
No cash allowed last time on the Pennsylvania turnpike. They take a photo of the back plate and send out a legal notice, along with the bill, in the mail.
Traffic cameras are a scam, I’m all for beating them.
My BIL would agree. He travels the PA turnpikes all the time and has dozens of camera initiated tickets. I got one and i paid. He said i was stupid (no wize cracks) and said they can’t enforce because they are ticketing the vehicle with cameras and not the driver. Who can tell? Maybe your vehicle was being driven by someone else. All according to him, of course. After 2 decades or more, he has never got more than a reminder to pay on all his citations.
If they have plate readers that can’t read plates properly it’s on them to get it right.
Flipping plates well that is a BS move, but the other methods sound legit to me.
Depends on the local laws. If a dorito bag blew up off the road that may be grounds for not being fined. You’d still have to fight it in court and that’s a pain in the arse.
Or if you have a truck throw a couple sticks in the bumper and have it hangdown and obscure the numbers.
Plate flipper yep that’s easy to prove fraud.
I had a ticket once from a school bus. I have an extra car that my sons use. I honestly don’t know who was driving that day, but luckily the school bus was across the paved median 4 lanes over. Since it’s a paved median you’re still supposed to stop (even though there are no houses on that side he was driving.
But all I had to do was send in a notarized statement saying it wasn’t me driving the car. Then no ticket. But I’ve seen other school bus camera videos where they clearly show the driver. So if they have your face and you don’t have a family member(s) that look a lot like you...good luck if they come after you for their money.
‘costs Authorities millions’. Those poor, poor authoritas!
I stopped paying WSJ for a subscription, after forty years of their services.
I’ll have to look into the new change. Yes, there is no witness. Only a photo. But as I recall at the time the issue was not just no testimony but no ability to cross examine. The state did prosecute a few cases and brought in “experts” who swore the cameras were accurate but ultimately that is also dubious. They are not the ones taking the photo and again nobody was able to physically examine the cameras. Anyone can photoshop an image.
Also if I recall, the revenue is or was split with the company that operated them. Which does create a conflict of interest. It’s in the operators interest to generate fines. And it’s in the cities’ interests to mess with traffic patterns and lights to purposefully frustrate drivers to generate fines. You know if you make the next light you’ll make the next 10 lights, so maybe you go a little faster for a few 100 feet. Which is unsafe; but profitable to the city.
As society descends into lawlessness, I'm finding myself running a lot more red lights than I used to. Typically, red left-hand turn arrows when there isn't a car in sight.
I used to dutifully wait for the arrow to turn green. Now I say screw it. I ran one the other morning and the guy right behind me said screw it as well and followed me right through it.
Ain't dystopia great!
It’s not costing them “millions”. It’s costing us billions. They’re cheating us out of a few million less than they want. Drop in the bucket. Ask retailers around the country how much they’ve lost by defunding police and allowing certain groups to steal whatever and whenever they want.
Here’s the relatively sane rate of funding our roads, IMO:
1. Drill, drill, drill for inexpensive energy, products and GASOLINE AND DIESEL.
2. Tax that GAS AND DIESEL at about $1.50 per gallon or so (combined fed/state).
3. Pay off the bonds on all the toll roads and make ‘em free!
4. PEOPLE HATE TOLLS!!!
Or, you could do like Joetato, the Dumbs and GOPee, restrict energy development, try to force us all into electric vehicles, then ultimately have TOLLS AND EXPENSIVE GASOLINE anyway.
Does it still work that way? I’m from Florida (originally from Maryland), and I don’t need a front plate in Florida.
BULL$}{!T !!!
It's ALL about the money !!!
We already pay for roads via the Taxes on fuel and Tags (some states are charging hundreds for Tags by adding Bridge and Road fees and School District fees.)
“1. Drill, drill, drill for inexpensive energy, products and GASOLINE AND DIESEL.
2. Tax that GAS AND DIESEL at about $1.50 per gallon or so (combined fed/state).
3. Pay off the bonds on all the toll roads and make ‘em free!
4. PEOPLE HATE TOLLS!!!”
LOVE IT!!!!
Brings back memories. One of the (few) things that I didn’t like about Rush was his abject opposition to fuel taxes, and that was because we either get fuel taxes or nasty toll roads, nothing in between (although in your former Texas, they are partially financing highways from the general fund, but I doubt that’s the case anywhere else).
Anyway, Austin is flooded with Toll Roads but they deserve it - for the rest of Texas it didn’t get nearly as bad as Governor Perry had threatened.
I personally think toll roads are useful, but most people, I suspect, would rather not have them at all. Therefore, the proposed alternative. A driver in a fuel-efficient car would be paying about 5 cents a mile. In contrast, the Delaware Turnpike (I-95) is about 36 cents a mile. I suspect the Pennsylvania Turnpike is about 15 cents a mile by now for EZ-Pass and way north of that for toll-by-plate.
Not my former Texas. I’m originally from Maryland, currently in Florida.
Apologies - I just remember you being front-and-center in assessing the TTC.
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