Stupidity with EZ-Pass
I was reading a car forum the other day, specifically a thread talking about stolen cars, in an effort to help find them. Well, one person noted that their car was “still out there” and listed several times when the *clever* thief had used the owner’s EZ-Pass module on the Garden State Parkway. I wasn’t able to read the rest of the thread, but I do hope they were able to use this information to help relocate their stolen car.
This whole thing left me wondering two things:
1) The Big Brother issue of EZ-Pass - well, the police *could* use the records to give speeding tickets out, but the logistics and legalities of this are questionable. On the other hand, can authorities use this information for crime reduction? To help place a vehicle somewhere at a certain time, and to help locate stolen cars?
And, more importantly -
2) How stupid are you if you steal someone’s car and still use their EZ-Pass??? Maybe they didn’t realize it was in the car, but by my observations the module usually needs to be placed in a pretty prominant location for daily use, as I’m sure the owner of the car had done. Maybe they didn’t want to pay the tolls, and figured, hell, it’s someone else’s bill. Or maybe they did it to taunt the person they’d stolen the car from.
In any case, all I have to say in conclusion is this: If the EZ-Pass info can be used to locate a stolen car, what kind of stupid person would actually continue to use the module? It’s much like the fairly obvious drug deals made by Kris’s apartment, where the people aren’t so much “sneaky” as “trying to be sneaky.” They must not have gone to their “looking like you are supposed to be there” classes in criminal school, but that whole thing is a discussion for another day. )-(
