Delaware Wants Your Car As Toll. Please Have Exact Change.

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: September 18th, 2008

delaware wants your car as toll please have exact change

If you fail to pay your toll on Delaware’s I-95, the state could confiscate your car without any due process. This cheery news comes to us from motorist watchdogs extraordinaire, thenewspaper.com. Your license plate number will be recorded if you drive through an automated toll point without paying, and police can run your plates through a database to find out if you have evaded your toll-paying responsibilities. If you show up on one of these databases, your car can literally be confiscated on the roadside, meaning you have to prove your innocence to a civil hearing officer to avoid paying hefty fines and towing fees. And automated toll roads are hardly without their errors; one Texas system overcharged some 50k motorists, Virginia falsely accused 8k of skipping toll payments, and a Harris County audit showed that as many as 67k drivers are wrongly accused of not paying tolls. But that’s not stopping Delaware from stranding you on the side of the road and forcing you into a Kafka-esque bureaucratic labyrinth to get your car back, whether you’re guilty or not. Just another reason to avoid that particular slice of purgatory they call Delaware.

Edward Niedermeyer

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4 of 31 comments

John R on Sep 18, 2008
Just another reason to avoid that particular slice of purgatory they call Delaware. Hey hey! I live here! Tax free shopping, baby! [sigh] Anyway, we all know Jersey is the Purgatory State. If you wanna talk about horrible personalities, baffling driving behavior, and poor road planning, NJ takes the cake. You don't wanna pay the toll, just avoid it. You can't doing anything about the Delaware bridge toll if you're coming off the NJ turnpike or 295. But everyone can avoid the second one going into MD. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=newark,+de&ie=UTF8&ll=39.657381,-75.76807&spn=0.055903,0.11055&z=13 Take the 896 north exit and turn left on to Christiana Pkwy (RT 4) and the left on to Elkton Rd (RT 2). Its a straight shot at that point. You'll cross into MD and run into 95 south. It'll add about 10 minutes to your trip, though.

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Escapenguin on Sep 19, 2008

I was gonna hop on this, but NulloModo and John R already nailed it on key points I was hoping to defend. Don't knock DE or you'll force our hand to take more pot shots at NJ.

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GS650G on Sep 19, 2008

Yeah Delaware sucks. Don't move here, drive or shop in our state. Stay in the People's Republik of New Jersey or the CommonWealth confiscation of PA or some other place. Too many out of staters coming in here and demanding more tax money be spent in their neighborhoods. Delaware is an island of fiscal responsibility surrounded by high waters of taxes. You would not believe how low our property taxes are. BTW name another state that balances it's budget every year.

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Morbo on Sep 19, 2008
GS650G you bring a tear to my eye. I live in the People's Republic of NJ, and I now go to Christiana each Christmas so that my liege, his Lordship King Jon Corzine I, cannot lay claim to what little treasure I have. Seriously though, if it weren't for Wilmington, the chicken farms, and the screen door factory (see The Simpsons), Delaware would be a little slice of heaven.

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