Driver Uses Device That Blocks License Plate to Cheat Tolls

It’s highly illegal and it cost the owner of the car a felony charge with the authorities, but you can’t deny this guy’s creativity when it comes to avoiding tolls on his daily commute.

The owner of this Honda Civic built a license plate frame that, for the most part, looks no different than any of hundreds of generic plate forms you might find at your local auto parts store. However, this one has a nifty little feature that, depending on how many times a day he hit the tollroad, could have saved him thousands of dollars. With the push of a button, the plate frame reveals it’s dirty little secret, a black piece of fabric that rolls down from the top to conceal the plate completely, rendering the tollbooth cameras useless in combating the driver simply rolling right on through the booth without paying a single cent. Once he’s out of sight of the camera, another press of a button and the fabric retracts, keeping the accessory from drawing the attention of the police… for a while at least.

Eventually, the driver messed up and got caught, leaving him facing felony charges for “cheating”, an appropriately-named charge for his misdeeds. While the officer interviewed for the news said the fine was only $1.25, and she’s correct in that being the fee to pass through the booth once. However, assuming this guy came up with the plan because he uses that toll road daily means he likely passed through it on his commute to work and back, meaning that’s $2.50 a day. Extrapolating that out for five work days a week over 52 weeks, that’s a minimum of $650 a year if he only uses that road to go to work and back. There’s a good chance he uses it on the weekends too, which means the total tally would be even higher. Had he not gotten caught, he could have easily saved thousands of dollars over the course of a few years, so we can’t really say we blame him.