'Simpsons' Fan With Personalized Plate Being Swamped With Tickets
Like a lot of people, I am a "Simpsons" fan. Well, at least I was -- I've been inconsistent with newer episodes since 2006 or so. But I still check in here and there -- and I also remember a lot of gags from the old episodes. Like Bart trying to find a small souvenir license plate with his name and coming no closer than "Bort."
A woman in Massachusetts named Katie Unis collects "Simpsons" memorabilia. She has a vanity plate that says "Bort" -- one that is completely legal. One that she paid for.
Here's the problem. Those fake license plates that people buy at souvenir shops sometimes look too much like actual Massachusetts plates. And some folks are buying fake plates with the name "Bort" on them and slapping them on their cars. Either for fun or as a way to dodge electronic tolls. These folks pick up the fake plates online or when visiting Universal Studios.
Unis and her husband are getting hit with toll charges because of this.
It sounds like a funny story, if annoying for Unis and her husband, but it also shows the limits of these electronic systems. The fact that a clearly fake novelty souvenir can look enough like a real license plate is kind of scary. One hopes that the manufacturers of electronic toll monitoring systems like EZ-Pass can figure out how to make their equipment tell the difference.
Then again, maybe not. My father and I did a driving vacation from Chicago to upstate New York two or three years ago, and we rented a car (press cars have mileage limits and neither of my folks' cars were available). We got stuck in a tollbooth in Indiana or Ohio because the I-Pass/EZ-Pass tag didn't read.
Another example -- sometimes I'd attach a press car to my I-Pass account and get charged for a toll in another state -- since manufacturer plates sometimes use the same numbers. Apparently the make and model didn't matter.
Minor inconveniences, yes, but a reminder that tech isn't infallible.
Not even the Sarcasm Detector.
[Image: Woodan/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Moral of the story: DEFINITELY check your toll bill. E-470 here in Colorado tried to bill me last year for like $50 despite the fact that I hadn't used E-470 in almost two years. I asked them what license plate it was rung up under, and it was the one for my 2003 Buick, which my kid had totaled out four years before. I asked them for a picture of the license plate toll, and the pic was of a truck with a license plate number similar to the old Buick's. They tossed the bill.
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