Toll bridge

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Toll bridge on the S 31 in Austria

Toll bridges are sign gantries set up over toll roads , which are used for the automatic billing of the toll or to control the payment of the toll.

Truck toll in Germany

Control bridge on the A 81 in Germany
Detail view of a control bridge

The control bridges (lattice bridges) operated by the Toll Collect consortium for the truck toll in Germany were manufactured by Vitronic GmbH and control the correct payment of the toll. Therefore, the correct name is control bridge and not, as is often wrongly described, a toll bridge. The approx. 300 bridges distributed over the entire motorway network work with automatic number plate recognition to determine the number plate as well as components for recognizing the vehicle type. The control bridges record the license plates of all vehicles, including cars. Whether a vehicle is subject to a toll or not is determined by 3D scanning. The complex electronic image evaluation and processing for this was developed by Vitronic from Wiesbaden. License plate image and 3D image are combined as a data record. Data records of vehicles not subject to toll are immediately deleted again (in accordance with Section 9 (5) of the Federal Trunk Road Toll Act).

For data records of vehicles recognized as subject to toll, the license plate is used to check whether a toll booking is available in the log-on server. If no booking is found, the data record is sent to Toll Collect, where the manual follow-up checks are carried out by employees. If a license plate is not automatically recognized by the software, the data record is also sent to Toll Collect, where employees evaluate the license plate images and check whether a valid booking has been made. If a driver is identified as a toll evader, the data is passed on to the Federal Office for Goods Transport , which initiates administrative fine proceedings against the vehicle owner.

When a truck with an activated on-board unit (OBU) drives through a control bridge, the bridge requests the data stored in the OBU. Among other things, the license plate number, number of axles and gross vehicle weight are stored in the OBU. If the data in the OBU is consistent with the data determined by the bridge, the data record is removed, otherwise the data is also sent to Toll Collect for manual follow-up checks. This is the case, for example, if the number plate of the truck stored in the OBU does not match the one recognized by automatic number plate recognition, or if four axles are stored in the OBU but six are recognized by 3D scanning.

For data protection reasons, not all bridges may be operated at the same time. Instead, only random checks are allowed. Only about 10% of all trucks are checked. According to Toll Collect, there are no technical reasons against permanent activation of all bridges, only aspects of data protection law.

It has already been discussed repeatedly whether this information may be evaluated in the event of “suspicion of terrorism” or during criminal prosecution. The improper use of the data from the toll system contradicts the current legal situation (Section 7 (2) BFStrMG), but this does not mean that license plate scanning from other sources is not used by the police.

Control pillars

Toll Collect installed the toll monitoring column on the 2018 federal highway

As part of the extension of the truck toll to all federal highways from July 1, 2018, around 600 control pillars were set up on around 250,000 km of toll roads. The control pillars are four meters high, round and designed in striking blue and green. The color scheme should make it possible to distinguish between speed cameras. On some highly frequented national roads, the toll obligation is also controlled mobile.

All forms of control for compliance with the toll

There are a total of five types of checks to ensure compliance with the toll requirement.

  • Control bridges
  • Control pillars
  • Stationary control
  • Mobile control
  • Operational controls

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Innovation from Germany. (PDF; 4.3 MB) (No longer available online.) Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development, June 9, 2011, archived from the original on June 27, 2012 ; Retrieved April 26, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmvbs.de
  2. ↑ a b Law on the collection of route-related fees for the use of federal motorways and federal roads (BFStrMG). In: juris.de. Retrieved September 27, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Transparent motorist: On wheels in the surveillance state. In: stern.de. December 7, 2007, accessed April 26, 2012 .
  4. ^ The Schäuble catalog. From the anti-terror database to the preventive state. In: heise online. May 2007, accessed April 26, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Christoph Drösser: Do toll cameras also flash speed cameras? In: Zeit Online. June 9, 2011, accessed April 26, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Sascha Theißen: Risks of information and communication technology (ICT) implants with regard to data protection and data security . KIT Scientific Publishing, Karlsruhe 2009, ISBN 978-3-86644-343-3 , p. 104 ff .
  7. ^ Toll Collect: New control for federal highways. Archived from the original on July 21, 2018 ; accessed on July 21, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Michael Heise: Control pillars for truck tolls: Just look, don't flash . In: Naumburger Tageblatt / MZ . ( naumburger-tageblatt.de [accessed on July 1, 2018]).
  9. ↑ Control pillars on a prefabricated component - a fundamental idea . In: Toll Collect blog . November 16, 2017 ( toll-collect-blog.de [accessed July 1, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Toll Collect | Toll control. Retrieved July 1, 2018 .