[refurb]

The reason they link a tag to a car is because fees vary by vehicle type (number of axles). If the tags weren't linked to a vehicle, a commercial truck driver could simply buy a tag for a car and pay a whole lot less in tolls.

[fnordfnordfnord]

No, they couldn't because it would be immediately obvious from the camera footage. Photos are always taken, even when a tag is registered.

[Retric]

But nobody looks at that footage 99% of the time. Reolistically the only way to do prepaid tags it to bill the maximum amount as truckers would happily say use a car the first time and then use the rest of the cash on the semi unless they checked every time.

[fnordfnordfnord]

They could sell you a prepaid tag, and you could get change back or reconcile its unpaid balance when you returned it. This could all be accomplished at a vending machine, or at a car-rental counter, or any number of other places.

>But nobody looks at that footage 99% of the time.

A truck can be trivially detected and distinguished from a car. The S/N of the tag detected can then have the proper amount deducted.

Or just put a sign on the vending machine, "Not for Trucks"

[Retric]

Any form of trivially detected is going to cost millions. For what they assume is a tiny market, it's really an edge case that has little benifit to them. Don't forget they avoided ticketing most people who simply went through the EZ pass lanes without paying for years. Why, cost benifit analysis, they did not want to drive away users over what amounted to be a fairly small revenue stream.

Edit: Also, all it takes is a picture of your license plate as you go through a toll an any anonymity is gone which makes anon EZ passes somewhat silly.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>Also, all it takes is a picture of your license plate as you go through a toll an any anonymity is gone

No, because a prepaid eztag wouldn't mail a statement of your whereabouts to your home/office.

[refurb]

What? If they have a picture of your plate they have the address the vehicle registration is sent to. If it's a rental, they can get renter info pretty easily.

[3minus1]

i bet it's expensive to determine the vehicle type in every single photo.

[fnordfnordfnord]

I bet it's not hard to tell a Peterbilt with trailer from a Honda Civic. They OCR the license plate number in real time, which is a whole lot more sophisticated of a problem than what I suggested.

[sokoloff]

OCR of license plate characters is far easier than distinguishing specific vehicle and weight classes. Fortunately, the license plate is connected to a database that tells you much of what you want anyway. Couple that with weight sensors (to count axles), and you've got the data you need for tolling without doing any "hard" visual recognition.