I just registered for a TxTag, the wireless method for paying your toll as you go through a booth. It occurs to me that law enforcement will soon be using these electronic records to prove the time and place a defendant or witness was present at a particular location. Could also provide alibi information. Get those grand jury subpoenas ready.

Has anyone already had such a case?

I'd be careful about accepting the TollTag reports at face value. Much like an internet crime and an IP address, the identification only goes as far as the numbers. It wouldn't be hard to have another person (or vehicle) "use" the tag to create an alibi, or other such fakery.

Of course that assumes forethought, and like anything it's a great starting point, but it's far from exact - it's a pointer towards the "real" information.

In regards to TollTag violators (those who use TollTag lanes without the appropriate tag), I've been trying to think of all the potential violations. At the very least, I'm thinking we'll see "obscured license plates" a lot more as PC for traffic stops.

A question myself - are the "you didn't pay your toll" notices sent out based on LP/registrations civil matters, or criminally punishable if not paid? How do you determine the driver and/or culpable party?

Just curious... I'm sure our bretheren from Harris County and Dallas County are more seasoned with this new-fangled road tech...

Mike

Mike,

I used to handle our JP prosecutions in a district with part of the Dallas Tollway running through in, so let me take a shot at answering your questions.

The NTTA sends out the "unpaid toll" letter to the address your car is registered to. (Not the address you give NTTA when you get a TollTag, like most people think.) If you fail to respond to the letter within 30 days, then NTTA goes to the appropriate local agency, and a class c citation is mailed out. So it's only criminally culpable if you ignore the "unpaid toll" letter.

As far as figuring out who was driving...you don't. The registered owner of the car is responsible for the tolls, regardless of who was actually driving. Basically, the only way out of culpability is to have proof you'd sold the car by then or had reported it stolen.

I hated handling toll violations for just those reasons. Everyone would come in with the story of how their son/brother/friend had been driving and it wasn't their fault, or how they hadn't received the letter from NTTA (usually because they never changed their registration address). Tempers got more heated than in the felony dockets!

JB,
I had a case earlier this year in which we subpoenaed a homicide victim's toll tag information. We received a long list of the dates and times she passed through the various toll stations, including which direction she was traveling. Using that, we were able to determine that the defendant's timeline of when she'd supposedly last gone to visit him was way out of whack. We had just filed the toll tag record with a business records affidavit, but he pled at the last minute so we never got to introduce it.