The horse is long gone from the barn for this type of concern. Illinois along with a number of other states have had I-Pass or Ez-Pass toll collection systems for more than 10 years. Florida has Ez-Go or something like that. I don?t even know the acronyms for the others.
In Illinois they provide users with tolls that are half the rate of the manual toll lanes. This cost saving along with the convenience of not having to wait in lines to manually pay the tolls is significant. With Open-Road Tolling booths transponder equipped drivers pass through the toll collection points at highway speeds. This saves significant fuel and time.
You may signup for your transponder at the local supermarket. A refundable deposit and an initial credit of $40.00 gets you on the road.
At what cost? Not sure what anyone can do with knowing that I passed through a toll booth at a certain time. There have been some instances where divorce lawyers have issued subpoenas for Toll Authority records to attempt to prove travel by straying spouses. They have assured users that the toll records will never be used to enforce traffic laws. Of course they are a government agency so we know how reliable that promise is. The lure of $200 speeding fines at the price of a postage stamp will too much for some politician to bypass.
More and more of these toll authorities have reciprocal agreements. I recently traveled from Illinois to Maine and return via the various toll road systems without ever dipping into my pocket for coins or bills; a real convenience. Sure somewhere in a computer file there is a toll record of my trip. It likely matches up with my credit card records for gas, food and lodging purchases. Then add in the record of my cell phone switching for cell to cell through out the trip. There is probably also a record of my logging onto the internet each night from the motel to retrieve my email, etc. I don?t have a Twitter or Face Book or any of the other social networking accounts so I do have some small place to hide.
But unless you are willing to forego many of your other conveniences and move to your cave I think your life is already pretty well documented in 1?s and 0?s.
Discussion on:
Message 13 of 1
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