How illegal to drive thru toll without paying?

A while back I went to another city, more than 180 miles away to buy a car. My dad drove me there. We never been there before. I got the car from an individual, so I didn't get any paper tags. The state does not require registration for 7 business days, but it does require insurance. I did get insurance before driving.

Anyways, we apparently took an unmanned toll road because my dad got a bill in the mail with a picture of his plates. The car I drove had no plates, not even paper ones so I got nothing. I don't plan on doing this again, I didn't know we took a toll road. But my question is, how illegal was it for us to take an unmanned "photographical" toll road without any plates?

2016-04-05T09:06:06Z

P.S. I paid my dad's toll bill.

Grandpa Jack2016-04-05T09:13:48Z

Favorite Answer

As long as the toll gets paid before the grace period to pay the toll expires, what you guys did wasn't illegal. You get a certain period of time to pay the toll if you missed paying it because, as you experienced, it can and does happen.

You failing to pay the toll at all is technically illegal, though since there is no record of your car's plates then there is also no record of you missing the toll. In other words, you aren't going to get caught because there is no easy way to find you that costs less than the amount they lost by you skipping the toll.

sciencegravy2016-04-05T09:12:21Z

It's like a parking ticket.

Or the equivalent of running a red light, and getting a ticket in the mail via a red-light camera, rather than in person...the ticket goes with the car, like a parking ticket, not with the driver, since you can't prove who was driving.