TORONTO – The OPP has started using new tools to reduce the number of people evading the 407 tolls.

The 407, Ontario’s only tolled highway, is looked after by a 38-officer OPP detachment. The issue of cheating has become serious enough that the OPP and Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) have been meeting to discuss possible solutions.

Up until now, the OTA reports, drivers used various tactics to try to get around the tolls.

Some of those methods:

• Using a passenger car transponder to get lower rates;
• Obscuring or moving around the license plates to hide them from cameras;
• Removing the transponder altogether before the truck drives through gantries;
• Using an old or faulty transponder;
• Trying to get shorter distance reads by taking the transponder off and on the dash.

The detachment of police officers, first dispatched in 2006, has cut down on commercial and civilian vehicle cheating-avoiding paying the tolls-considerably, but that kind of illegal activity has not been squashed entirely. But the OPP’s new technology makes it much easier to catch cheating drivers.

Certain units will now be equipped with new technology that can identify all of the tactics above, with devices on both sides of the police car that can scan passing vehicles. The devices can detect non-working transponders, faulty transponders, and trucks that don’t have a transponder at all.

The OTA also reminds carriers, especially those that have operations in the U.S., that E-ZPass is not-and will not be accepted as-a substitute for a 407 transponder.