Confidentiality for officials being abused to thwart toll enforcement in California

Confidentiality designed to protect government workers in California from harassment by criminals is being abused to allow them to avoid toll enforcement, reports the Orange County Register newspaper (2008-04-04). The Register did a major investigation of what is called the Confidential Records Program, a law enacted in 1978 which allowed police and other law officers' home addresses and those of their relatives to be omitted from the state motor registry database.

Almost a million of some 30 million vehicles statewide are now shielded under this law.

How serious is this problem for toll enforcement and video tolling?

On the 91 Express Lanes (91XL) the Register reports that 14,535 trips went unpaid over 5 years by officials whose addresses are not available to the Orange County Transportation Authority because of the Confidential Records law.

$29,500 in tolls has been lost over 5 years.

Put that way it sounds like a major issue.

But wait!

Eight a day

$29,500 over five years is 29,500/5x365 is an average $16.16/day. Sixteen dollars!

Over the last five years the 91X Lanes have grossed $195m in tolls or $106.8k/day.

So that $16 evaded by abuse of the confidential records law each day is 0.00015 or 0.015% of revenue.

Penny ante stuff

That's penny-ante stuff in the larger scheme of things.

The unpaid trips by the no-address vehicles totaled 14,535 by 3,722 separate vehicles over five years. 14,535/5x365 is close to 8 vehicles per day.

8 out of roughly 30,000 or 0.00027 or 0.027%.

Interestingly the abusers seem to have traveled disproportionately offpeak, at times of lower tolls, since their due tolls were below average.

Given that most toll agencies with open road tolling like the 91X Lanes have violations running in the range 3% to 6%, this constitutes between one and a half of a percent of normally expected violations.

Of course you want to crack down on these abuses out of fairness to those who pay, but the monetary losses are trivial.

One other thing. The article begins:

"It's 1:45 p.m. on a Wednesday in February and a Toyota Camry is driving west on the 91 Express Lanes, for free, for the 470th time.

"The electronic transponder on the dashboard – used to bill tollway users – is inactive. The Camry's owners, airport traffic officer Rudolph Duplessis and his wife, Loretta, have never had a toll road account, officials say.

"They've never received a violation notice in the mail, either. Their car is registered as part of a state program which hides their home address on Department of Motor Vehicles records. The agency that operates the tollway does not have legal access to their address.

"Their Toyota is one of 996,716 vehicles registered to motorists who are affiliated with 1,800 state and local agencies and who are allowed to shield their addresses under the Confidential Records Program." (end of quote

Inactive transponder

The second par raises many questions:

(1) If Duplessis and his wife never had a toll account how come they have a transponder? Transponders are only issued to people when they establish a toll account.

Is it a stolen transponder, or just one left behind by the previous owners of the Camry?

(2) Why is it inactive? Because it's just sitting on the dashboard rather than being mounted on the windshield as required to get and send a good signal?

Because it's old and the battery is run down?

(3) Why is it sitting there on the dashboard inactive - to pass off as a genuine transponder if they get pulled over?

The reporter leaves us hanging.

"We diddun know"

The piece does provide some interesting anecdotal stuff. When contacted they almost invariably claimed their toll evasion was inadvertent. No transponder, no account and hundreds of inadvertent violations! Tell that to the judge.

The article concedes that motor registry databases are these days only one of many sources of information on the names and addresses of vehicle owners. There are a bunch of companies that specialize in providing data on people's whereabouts independently of motor registry databases and video tolling and enforcement draws on those.

And most toll authorities are now focussing pull-over enforcement on the rampant violators. Cameras can be loaded with the license plates and images of the leading several hundred violators, allowing them to identified driving down the road and their details transmitted to an in-vehicle display in a police cruiser downstream which can pull them over.

In issuing the citation the officer gets the violator's address and other personal details.

In some states they are impounding the vehicles of the rampant violators on the spot, then negotiating release of the vehicle in return for payment of outstanding tolls and penalties.

The confidentiality of their address in the motor vehicle database is irrelevant in this situation.

The Camry of Rudolph Duplessis, the airport worker gets caught that way according to the Register piece:

"But by the time a California Highway Patrol officer recognized Loretta Duplessis' Camry from a 'heavy hitter' list of toll evaders and pulled her over Feb. 27, the couple had racked up $34,805.95 in penalties from OCTA, according to a note the officer wrote on her citation."

Leading abusers of the confidential records program are overwhelmingly policemen and prison guards, the Register reports says. Top of the list are Michell and Dwight Storay of the state jail service: 622 toll violations.

Number two was a Brenda Orantes who ran up 411 violations on the 91X Lanes. Her license plates were registered to the San Bernardino Police Department which says they can't trace her! She isn't an employee or a relative.

Only way to nail her is the old fashioned way with a police cruiser supported by hightech license plate reading cameras.

see

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/dmv-police-confidential-2011354-program-records

TOLLROADSnews 2008-04-08