Posts
Tampa, Florida -- Meet Joel Chandler, who just paid his $1.00 toll on the Polk Parkway with a $100 bill. He is not allowed to leave unless he provides personal info to the toll taker. The toll taker tells Chandler this is what happens when they get large bills. She says this is what they have to do.
Chandler says to the toll taker, "So I'm being detained?" She says yes sir. It is a policy the Florida Turnpike authority instituted for people who paid with $20, $50 or $100 bills. After it happened once, Chandler kept testing the system and taped his encounters as he went through the toll booths.
One time a toll taker told him, she wouldn't give him his change unless he gave her the information. Chandler replied, "So I'm being detained." He asked why he was being detained but never got an answer.
Chandler says this is a serious criminal offense, to detain someone without proper legal authority. He says that is exactly what the department is doing...
When Chandler called and e-mailed the Florida Department of Transportation to complain about the policy, he was told there is no policy to detain people who give large bills. He says that made him more concerned, because that meant there were individual rogue toll takers detaining people.
I've never been a fan of toll roads anyway -- they're a Yankee invention imported South after the War for Southern Independence. This takes it up a notch, though. When paying cash for anything, you shouldn't have to provide personal information, regardless of the currency. As for counterfeiting, isn't Uncle Sam spending gazillions redesigning the currency every few years so that only he can print funny money? These would be a lot better investment for our intrepid toll collectors than the time and paperwork of questionable detention.
Just another example of how you better not inconvenience government when they inconvenience you. Or else.
No comments:
Post a Comment