Most Tuesdays I go to a nearby mall for a delish little Shack Burger at Shake Shack. There’s a nice covered parking garage. A crossbar bars entry until you press a button to get an entry card.

There are nearby public transit facilities, so the mall doesn’t want people parking for free only to take the public transit. When you leave you have to insert your entry card. If you’ve been parked two hours or more you have to pay to get the crossbar raised.

But after my 45 minute visit to Shake Shack, I approach the exit gate – and the crossbar always rises with no need to insert the entry card. I’ve long suspected that they have license plate readers to know your entry and exit times.

Suspicion confirmed. Last week, after my Shake Shack visit, I went to the adjacent T-Mobile store to get my mobile phone account transferred from Sprint. A longish process.

Afterwards when I approached the exit gate the crossbar didn’t automatically rise. But I’d been savvy enough to get a parking pass from T-Mobile. So after inserting the entry card, then the parking pass, up went the crossbar.

yup.

right now, everyone who drives down my (public) street gets put on 4k video and archived for at least 2 weeks (depending on disk space).

It's legal and it's easy to do.

But soon I too will have LPR so I can keep track of how often a car not from the 'hood enters, how long they stay and how often they visit.

I'm just waiting for the prices to continue to decrease.

https://www.amazon.com/HDView-...id=1599670514&sr=8-3

I noticed last time I parked at the airport (Raleigh Durham, NC) the parking receipt has the tag number on it. You pull up, push the button and it prints the parking pass with the license plate number on it. Takes about 2 seconds for the whole process to happen.

No offense Radioman, but I find this whole thing more than a little creepy.

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:
No offense Radioman, but I find this whole thing more than a little creepy.

I have no way to know who a vehicle is registered to. It's just numbers on a plate. It's no different than what you would see with your eyes. Public road, so fair game, at least in my state.

It may be legal but it's still creepy.

Last weekend my wife and I went to Coeur d'Alene Idaho for the weekend. One night downtown we parked in 'pre-paid' parking, where you enter your license plate number and credit card to purchase time in a parking lot. At the end of the evening, we got back to our car and found a parking violation notice on the window. Someone came through the lot with a license plate scanner looking for violators. The scanner misinterpreted a 'W' in our license plate as an 'M', couldn't find a record of us paying, and gave us a ticket.

This is also how they verify your entry time when you "lose" your entry ticket. I'm not saying folks would purposefully lie, but it does prevent claiming a lost ticker from 15 minutes ago when your car has been in that airport garage, or wherever, for weeks.

quote:

Originally posted by 4x5:
The scanner misinterpreted a 'W' in our license plate as an 'M', couldn't find a record of us paying, and gave us a ticket.

Heck, if the ticket has the wrong plate number, then I'd just ignore it.

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:
This is also how they verify your entry time when you "lose" your entry ticket. I'm not saying folks would purposefully lie, but it does prevent claiming a lost ticker from 15 minutes ago when your car has been in that airport garage, or wherever, for weeks.

This is the correct answer.

License plate readers are merely replacing an individual driving around manually recording your plate/vehicle info. They have been doing that for decades; especially at airport and municipal garages. The move to plate readers is simply automating the process.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Originally posted by 4x5:
The scanner misinterpreted a 'W' in our license plate as an 'M', couldn't find a record of us paying, and gave us a ticket.

Heck, if the ticket has the wrong plate number, then I'd just ignore it.

They had our credit card info and would charge it for the ticket.

O'Hare has been taking pictures of plates for years. I had to send guys there once 20 years ago to retrieve some cars. The parking office knew exactly where they were parked.

On Longboat Key in Florida (near Sarasota) there are license plate readers on the 2 bridges onto the island. Every vehicle that drives onto the island has its license plate read and the info stored. Creepy maybe. But the system was instrumental in the capture of a murderer in 2018 in a murder committed at the Zota resort on the north end of the island.

The Board of our condo association on Longboat Key is considering an upgraded security system that would include cameras to read license plates of vehicles that approach the entrance gate. If you are a resident with a registered license plate number, the gate will open automatically. If not, you talk to the kiosk and ask for admittance.

On many software platforms, or VMS, the plates are searchable. You can grab plates from multiple LPR cameras and ask the system to show the appearances of plate WTF610 and up come the clips limited only by storage space. Powerful stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by Mark in Michigan:
On Longboat Key in Florida (near Sarasota) there are license plate readers on the 2 bridges onto the island. Every vehicle that drives onto the island has its license plate read and the info stored. Creepy maybe. But the system was instrumental in the capture of a murderer in 2018 in a murder committed at the Zota resort on the north end of the island.

The Board of our condo association on Longboat Key is considering an upgraded security system that would include cameras to read license plates of vehicles that approach the entrance gate. If you are a resident with a registered license plate number, the gate will open automatically. If not, you talk to the kiosk and ask for admittance.

That's not creepy. Creepy is some random neighbor keeping track of your comings and goings with a license plate reader.

You know.. for car shows.

AZ does not have front license plates. I work in the ghetto and 100% of the apartment complexes I visit daily have signs everywhere banning backing into parking spaces. This is so cops can drive through and run plates. The tow trucks look for permits, which are in the front and thus can't easily be seen from the back. But the landlords want to help the cops.