A CITY loses hundreds of millions in toll revenue after drivers discovered ways to make their signs unreadable.
Now the city is cracking down on fee evaders with harsh penalties and vehicle seizures.
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New York City drivers have been skating on toll lanes and bridges, figuring out different ways to make their license plates invisible to cameras.
Some will place reflective coverings over the sign, while others will place temporary fake signs or obscure them completely before driving in the toll lanes.
Mark Levine, Manhattan borough president, conducted a study that revealed that obscure signs, or “ghost signs,” cost the Big Apple about $200 million a year.
The revenue is used to finance public projects and repair infrastructure.
Their study also found that drivers blatantly pass speed and red light cameras with obscured signs about 100,000 times a month.
This number represents about 5% of all vehicles that pass city-sanctioned traffic enforcement cameras.
Without a reliable way to retrieve an owner’s information to properly cite them, he said bad driving behavior can escalate quickly.
“You better believe it influences behavior when people know their plate is illegible,” Levine said. the New York Post Office.
Mayor Eric Adams has been fighting ghost license plate users since 2022, with multiple crackdowns.
On a weekend, thousands of vehicles are stopped, with several hundred impounded or fined $200 for toll evasion.
A more recent crackdown in July caught 200 ghost license plate users, one of whom turned out to be a suspect in a 2005 assassination after a loaded gun was found in his car.
Levine said the city has so many cameras with high fines that it may have led people to be crafty about paying their tickets.
“It was very rare to see fake license plates before this,” he said.
“We’re seeing James Bond-level technology where they press a button to open a cover.”
What is a ghost plate?
If a sign is purposely hidden to make it unreadable with the intention of evading toll cameras, it will be labeled a “ghost sign.”
An obscured plate is considered a ghost plate if the license number is:
- Crossed out to make one or all of the letters unreadable to cameras.
- Covered with a reflective or fogged plastic covering.
- Covered with a piece of paper or a temporary fake paper plate.
- Covered with a piece of fabric.
- Totally absent.
- Replaced with fake or deactivated license plates.
Reporters found several anti-toll devices on Facebook Marketplace for about $60 a plate.
One such device, a black fabric cover that fell over a plate normally readable at the press of a button, was publicly sold online.
Levine said that while large fines, seizures and vehicle seizures through crackdowns are helping, the city could do more.
One of the first steps would be an effort to seize illegal devices sold online.
“There needs to be a severe crackdown on these fake license plates and devices that obscure the Internet,” he said.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
