California Tracks Everyone Using Toll Transponders

obtuse writes "Direct monitoring of traffic sounds pretty cool, but some people don't want their toll transponders tracked. They aren't installing direct driver tracking for law enforcement now, but the collected data could be subpoenaed. Of course, anyone who didn't want to be tracked could just put it in the glovebox anyway, so they won't be catching clever felons or tracking real paranoiacs."

Transponders work in the glove box too!

[Yo Grark]

Of course, anyone who didn't want to be tracked could just put it in the glovebox anyway, so they won't be catching clever felons or tracking real paranoiacs."

Left my transponder in the glove box once,BEEP BEEP ensured me that it was caught, and I was charged the appropriate toll.

I never figured out why law enforement couldn't track speeders and ticket them. 80 km of road travelled in 30 min = speeding!

-Yo Grark

"Canadian Bred with American Buttering"

This is common in Houston

[mprindle]

Hey everyone,

We have had this going on for a long time. They dont come right out and say they are using the toll tags for that purpose, but you know it's being done when you look at a site like this: Houston Traffic Map [tamu.edu]. It is pretty cool though. You can look at the map and see what roads are moving and which ones are not and during rush hours most of em arent.

M Prindle

Like photo radar it won't work

[Neil Watson]

We had photo radar here in Ontario, Canada for a while. No one liked it. The majority of speeders wanted their day in court, instead of paying a fine. The courts became so backed up with photo radar cases that the government had to stop using photo radar.

Re:Optional?

[Mark_in_Brazil]

"And to the dismay of some FasTrak users, it's not optional -- the only way to avoid triggering the sensors throughout nine Bay Area counties is to stash the transponder in Mylar bags, which will be provided to nervous motorists. "

Unfortunately, I don't think the (aluminized) mylar bags keep the sensors from being triggered. They do alter the signal, though. My mother lives in Maine and had one of those devices. She noticed that when the thing wasn't in the bag, the sensors would be triggered and the display at the toll booth would show that everything was OK and she could go ahead and drive through. But when it WAS in the bag, the display at the toll booth was still triggered, but with a different message, indicating that Mom's account would not be billed on this trip.

I was awfully proud of Mom when she first told me about this and mentioned that she didn't like "Big Brother" tracking where she was driving.

Re:Automatic tickets coming up soon

[Null_Packet]

Good point, but under California law this kind of speed enforcement is labeled a 'Speed Trap' and is expressley outlawed in Cali. The basic definition AFIAK is a speed trap uses two measuring devices at each end of a 'corridor', where your progress is timed and used to give you a ticket. In some states they used choppers and cessnas to stopwatch your progress between visible/plotted markers and a ground unit is dispatched to issue the ticket.

CA outtlaws this practice and requires for speeding tickets that the same office who clocked you is the same office you tickets you (with some slight variances). Worry less about the CHP and worry more about CalTrans' ability to fsck the data up and not build freeways in a timely manner.

Re:I can live with that.

[Moonshadow]

Legally, your car is a public place. Your trunk is not. There's a reason you can't drive around naked - it's in public, so you can get arrested for indecent exposure. Therefore, you can have the same expectation of privacy that you would have if you were in the mall, or walking, or whatever.

That is, unless you're in the trunk, which you probably don't want to be anyway.

Not personally identifiable

[alanjstr]

If you're paranoid, they'll give you a mylar storage bag for free. Otherwise, the serial numbers will be encrpyted and seperate from the data. Not only that, but "All record of serials numbers stored in electronic files will be destroyed daily, leaving only general averages and patterns for later study," Berman said.

Re:Automatic tickets coming up soon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

If you'd stop and consider that speed limits exist NOT for safety's sake but instead as revenue generators then you'll figure out that very few motorists agree with these laws, and even fewer actually obey them.

The highway system in the United States was engineered with curve radii and banking to support 70MPH speeds, which oddly enough is roughly what most people drive at. The Imperial Federal Government decided to scale things back to 55MPH, not to save lives but to save gas back in the Gas Crunch of the early 70's!!! Prior to that, the limit was 70MPH and was largely obeyed by the motoring public.

When the Gas Crunch was over, the wonderful Federal, State, and Local goverments all noted how much money they were making from all these speedy Americans, many of whom were just driving in the same manner they had prior to the Gas Crunch when it was perfectly safe and legal according to our Imperial Federal Government. Politicians LOVE money, in case you haven't noticed, and they weren't about to kill the goose that laid this golden speed trap egg. We were stuck with the double-nickel for almost 20 years before it was finally abolished on a Federal scale.

I have no problem with the authorities enforcing all the laws on the books in an equitable, reliable manner. I do have a problem with laws designed not with the public's best interests in mind but instead put politicians and their wallets first, and you should too.

Houston Tracking Respects Privacy

[naloxone]

Houston has its own traffic tracking system [tamu.edu] that operates in a similar [tamu.edu] fashion. When I first realized that they were using the toll-tags to calculate this, I became concerned about the privacy issues (especially given that this use is technically a violation of the license agreement [hctx.net]). So I called a friend of mine at the Texas Transportation Institute and asked about it.

And lo and behold, they actually turn out to take the privacy aspect very seriously. When an EZ-Tag (TM) passes under a sensor, it gets assigned an id. When it passes under the next sensor, it calculates the speed, adds it to the database with this generated id (not the toll tag number). And then it assigns it a new ID for the trip to the next sensor. Thus, TTI is incapable of knowing, even under threat of subpoena, the identity of any car passing down the highway or the route of any single vehicle beyond any single highway segment. The entire system is designed to prevent it.

EZpass'ers have an even easier hack...

[d3vpsaux]

I don't know how the transponders are distro'd in California, but with New York's EZpass, (and I'm sure any other EZpass coverage areas) we receive the device in a metal-oxide "static-free" bag, of which we are informed, "If you do not wish to use your EZpass for a toll, place the device in the metal-oxide bag provided and place in glove box."

So the simple solution: Leave it on your window for the toll, remove it after leaving the booths, and replace it when you need to leave the highway...

Why speed isn't tracked

[dutky]

I work for one of the two main ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) companies and there is a reason that the state and local agencies don't try to track speed using the toll records: they wound never be able to make the speeding tickets stick. There are basically three problems with trying to issue speeding tickets based on toll transponder data:

1. The date and time on the toll transactions are not very exact. We try to keep all the computers in the lanes synchronized, but we don't do that great a job of it. If speeding tickets were issued to clients based on the computed travel time between entry and exit, the clients could simply claim that the entry and exit times weren't correct (and they'd be right).
   
   
2. The toll tag doesn't tell us anything about who was driving the car, or, for that matter, what car was being driven (unless there is a violation in the toll lane itself, in which case we take a picture of the back bumper, so we can identify the vehicle and license plate. We still can't tell who was driving).
   

   With the red light cameras, the ticket is assessed against the vehicle (like a parking ticket) rather than against the driver's license (as with most speeding tickets) and the red light cameras get some proof that the ticketed vehicle was involved. With a calculated speeding ticket, however, there is no such proof. Again, the accused could simply say that neither they, nor their car, was on the road at that time, and there'd be no way to disprove it.
   
   

3. Finally, local agencies really don't want to piss of their clients. The reason for using the toll tags is to both increase collected toll revenue (there are lots of ways to lose toll revenue when cash is involved) and to better control traffic. If you penalize people for using the toll tags, you lose the ability to do the stuff you really want to do.
   

There is one other technical issue with trying to issue speeding tickets based on ETC data: most ETC systems don't collect enough data to make the calculation.

There are, basically, two types of toll facilities: boundry systems, where you get charged a toll each time you cross a boundry, and closed-loop systems, where you get charged based on the length of travel in the toll system. You can only calculate speed in a closed loop system, when both your entry and exit are recorded. Many toll systems are only boundry systems.

Even on a closed loop system, you can only calculate the average speed in the system. Under heavy traffic conditions, the average speed is likely never to exceed the posted speed limit! (this is the sad truth about speeding: it rarely benefits the speed but, occasionally, it is a great harm to an innocent bystander) You can pretty easily wipe out the extra time you gained by speeding while waiting to at the exit toll plaza.

Note, some agencies do issue fines for speeding thorugh the toll lanes, but that is a safety issue. None of the agencies that we work with issue actual speeding tickets based on speed in the toll lane. Also, many of the agencies maintain a constant police presence at the toll plazas, in order to go after violators. This was true even before there were ETC systems.

The ETC tags are pretty good for collecting information on what happens at the toll plazas. We can even get a fair amount of agregate information about the entire toll facility itself, based on plaza activity. But it is very difficult to extract information about individuals based on ETC data. The agencies seem to have a pretty good understanding of what the ETC data is good for and what legal limitations they are under.

One example to illustrate this point: Some of the original ETC installations took pictures of violators from in front of the vehicle, including a picture of the driver and passenger in the front seat. Now, however, we only take pictures of the front and rear bumpers, specifically avoiding either front or rear windshield.

The reason is a legal one. Early on in the history of ETC systems a law suit was brought against one of the local agencies because a driver had violated the toll lane and had his picture taken. The violation notice was mailed to his house, where it was opened by his wife. His wife was quite upset to find a picture of her husband and a strange woman driving in his car in the middle of the day!

The local agencies are now prevented, legally, from invading a driver's privacy by photographing the driver or passengers of a vehicle passing thorugh an ETC system. (We still get some interesting pictures, but only when the driver's have gone out of their way to make themselves visible to the lane cameras)

Re:Driving is a privilege

[Ironica]

Spare you the lecture? You mean, spare you the reality?

There are thousands, even millions of families who have fewer cars than they have adults. There are a lot of people who survive with public transportation. Me, I own a car, but I walk or take the bus whenever I can... and I find that I "can" in circumstances when others would think it was not realistic.

Yes, driving is a privilege. Here's the way it works (in California, anyway):

- You must be a legal adult, so that you can be held legally responsible for your actions. If you are not, your parents are responsible for what you do while driving, and can take away your license.

- You must be able to see reasonably well, and if you need corrective lenses, you must wear them whenever driving.

- You must have a basic understanding of traffic law, and demonstrate that on a written test.

- You must have a basic understanding of how to operate a vehicle, and demonstrate that in a behind-the-wheel test.

- You must provide a birth certificate and social security card, your real name, your physical description, an image of your face, your home address, and your signature. You must also surrender all but the first two to any police officer who asks, when you're behind the wheel.

- Having one identification card or driver's license precludes you from obtaining another under a different name or number.

You give up a huge amount of privacy, and have quite a bit of proving to do, in order to drive legally. And, no part of the Constitution claims that we have the right to break laws. So, yes, it's a privilege, that you earn by fufilling all the above points. It's one you can lose relatively easily, too.

Besides, you find something in the Constitution that even implies the right to motorized transit. Or even a horse. Having a driver's license is no more a right than having a car, and is no less essential to exercising your driving privilege, so tell those who can't afford a car about their rights, why don't you.