Navigating the High Costs and Rules of Toll Roads | September 17 2024, 22:41

If you think your toll roads are expensive, take a look at ours. $31 just to use a dedicated lane. And that’s not even the maximum; I’ve heard it can reach $40. Note that on I-395/95, it’s not a dedicated highway, but just a dedicated lane.

If there are three or more people in your car, you can go for free, but you have to activate a special mode on the Ez-Pass box (HOV). If there are fewer than three, you must definitely disable this mode, and then you pay according to the standard rates. Forgetting to turn off HOV when driving alone or with one passenger means a $125 fine for the first offense, $250 for the second, $500 for the third, and $1000 for the fourth and subsequent offenses. From the second offense, you also get three penalty points, which significantly increases insurance rates, and if unaddressed, the record stays for 11 years. So, if you want to use the toll highway, you need to be not only prepared to pay but also remember to switch the box to a different mode.

Truthfully, the cost indicated on the sign is the maximum possible toll at that moment for the full route. It’s the price for the entire journey on toll lanes, from one end to the other — about 60 miles, roughly an hour’s drive. But if you exit earlier, the system automatically recalculates the price based on your actual route.

Moreover, there are cameras on the road that somehow manage to detect if there are three people in the car. It’s easy to spot two in the front, but how do they detect an additional person at the back? Well, they don’t see children well, which is why the police periodically stop families and apologize. I’ll leave a link to one of the solutions in the comments. Understandably, there will be some false triggers, but at least the data set provided for human check and filtering will have fewer errors.

People on forums are asking if, now that abortions are considered murder in some states, from which month can you count two passengers in the seat of an expecting mother in the car. A valid question, indeed.