NTPS has upgraded its toll enforcement system

The Hungarian news agency MTI has reported that at its Tuesday press conference the National Toll Payment Services Plc. (NTPS) announced a new development supporting road use authorization enforcement. At the event, CEO Tamás Bartal said that the new technology expanded enforcement options for heavy-duty vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, including the so-called ghost trucks. The system uses a state-of-the-art camera to record video of oncoming vehicles while on the go, which makes enforcement inevitable and renders tricks meaningless.

Thanks to the development, the effectiveness of controls is multiplied compared to conventional methods such as toll gantries and roadside inspections. During the testing period, which lasted until the end of April this year, 67 of the nearly 3,600 processed cases of on-the-go controls were handed over to the Authority to impose toll fines. Based on the positive test results, NTPS Plc. may also apply the new enforcement method to the e-vignette system in the future.

Tamás Bartal stressed that their objective was not to increase the number of fines imposed but to encourage law-abiding customer behaviour, and that identifying tricksters also protected the interests of compliant carriers. The CEO also explained that most of the abusers identified by the on-the-go enforcement method also violated other rules, therefore it was important to drive fraudulent entrepreneurs out of the market in several regards. Last year, NTPS Plc. registered approximately one million fine procedures in the e-vignette system and quarter of a million cases of unauthorized road use in the e-toll system for vehicles over 3.5 tonnes.

The video below illustrates how the new on-the-go toll enforcement method works.