Scofflaws increasingly avoid highway cameras with doctored or covered license plates. Mechanical devices that can hide a driver’s tag at the push of a button are sold online for a few hundred dollars, reports the Wall Street Journal. Other drivers are getting creative on the cheap, jury-rigging their plates with face masks or duct tape. “There’s a lot of inventive people with a lot of time on their hands,” said Robin Bramwell-Stewart of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, whose facilities include the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. This type of toll evasion has cost government agencies millions, prompting officials to push crackdowns like increasing fines. Authorities in the Dallas and San Francisco areas say they missed out on more than $33 million combined in tolls last year due to such tactics. The hit to MTA Bridges and Tunnels, which operates seven bridges and two tunnels in New York City, was nearly $21 million, a 137% jump from 2020.
Some drivers have power-washed paint off their plates or covered them with a range of household items such as leaf-shaped magnets, Bramwell-Stewart said. The Port Authority says officers in 2023 doubled the number of summonses issued for obstructed, missing, or, fictitious license plates compared with the prior year. Bramwell-Stewart said one driver from New Jersey repeatedly used what’s known in the streets as a flipper, which lets you remotely swap out a car’s real plate for a bogus one ahead of a toll area. In this instance, the bogus plate corresponded to an actual one registered to a woman who was mystified to receive the tolls. “Why do you keep billing me?” Bramwell-Stewart recalled her asking. The Port Authority says it figured out the ruse and arrested the free-rider in September on charges including tampering with public records and possession of burglar’s tools—and billed him for tolls mistakenly sent to the woman. “This is about fairness for all drivers,” said Cathy Sheridan, president of MTA Bridges and Tunnels in New York City. Obstructed or covered plates have become far more common, along with unregistered vehicles and fraudulent plates, over the past four years, Sheridan said.