The imperfect system of photographing license plates and billing people apparently wrongly bills about 33 people per day, or one tenth of one percent of its billings. CBS is on the case, and they interview one irate woman who claims to have been screwed twice by the Fastrak system — though her story sounds a little off, to be honest, claiming she was wrongly billed twice, but one of those times she paid in cash and we only have her word on that.

Anyway, her case leads CBS's Consumerwatch to get the MTC's John Goodwin on the record admitting that there are errors.

Goodwin says the majority of toll evasion mistakes are due to license plate frames, that obscure the bottom of the characters on the license plate, making it appear that the tag is from a different vehicle. For example, Goodwin says an E will sometimes appear to be an F, or a Z will be read as a 7.

So, he suggests, if you receive a bill that you think is in error, you should try escalating any phone call you make to a supervisor at Fastrak.

But the case of the lady who's just claiming she definitely paid cash to a toll-taker and then received a bill is an argument for getting rid of all toll takers like they did on the Golden Gate — then the only complaints can be about blurry license plate images.

Also, lady, get a damn transponder. It makes things go faster for all of us.

[CBS 5]