EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KOAA) — A man who lives in the Monument area is warning other Colorado drivers after receiving an E-470 toll bill for a day he says he never used the highway.
Steed Dolan reached out to News5 after discovering the charge and wanted to alert others about the issue. E470 confirmed its license-plate recognition system operates at a 94% confidence threshold. Plates that don't meet that threshold are sent for manual review, but the agency acknowledges misreads can still happen, as they did with Dolan.
Dolan said drivers who ignore a bill they believe is wrong could face serious consequences.
"When I got this last one, I actually had a look at our calendar, and I started looking at my text messages, seeing if I was in Denver cause I honestly didn’t remember," Dolan explained. "So I almost paid it until I called them."
An unpaid toll can pick up a $5 late fee, then go to collections after 90 days. Additional fees and penalties could total at least $70. Since the start of the year up until the end of August, E470 has processed more than 11 million transactions. Of those, 0.29% were disputed or dismissed, more than 30,000 transactions.
“It's not the 30,000 people disputing it because they identified it was erroneous," Dolan said of concerns for erroneous bills. "It's the people who don't realize that they're being charged for something that they're not using.”
If you believe you received a bill in error, E-470 says to contact customer service right away to dispute it. If you have had a similar issue to Steed, we ask that you reach out to Tony.Keith@koaa.com. The following information is from an E470 spokesperson.
What should a driver do if they receive a toll violation for a vehicle or plate that isn't theirs?
The driver should contact customer service as soon as possible to dispute the charge:
- Phone: (303) 537-3470 or (888) 946-3470
- Email: customerservice@expresstoll.com
- www.expresstoll.com [expresstoll.com]
- Mail: 22470 E. Stephen D. Hogan Parkway, Ste. 100, Aurora, Colorado 80018
What happens if someone receives a violation but believes it is junk mail and ignores it?
Ignoring a toll bill can result in additional fees including:
- $5 late fee if the bill is not paid by the due date
- If it remains unpaid for 90 days, it can be sent to collections, and a $20 collection fee may be added
- A $25 civil penalty may then be added
- After another 30 days, a $20 court fee may be added.
What safeguards are in place to prevent incorrect toll violations from being mailed to drivers?
If the system cannot identify a license plate with at least 94% confidence, the image is sent to a manual review queue. Trained reviewers then examine the image and attempt to identify the plate. The team is trained to recognize license plates from all U.S. states, entities and territories, as well as Mexico and Canada, and receives ongoing training as new plate designs are introduced. We also have a process to flag license plates that have previously been identified incorrectly or have known identification issues. Once flagged, transactions associated with those plates are routed for a final manual review before they are allowed to post to a bill, providing an additional level of verification.
How can a license plate be misread or incorrectly matched to a toll violation?
The license plate recognition system can occasionally mistake one character for another, such as a "B" being read as an "8".
When a driver uses E470, our system captures an image of the vehicle's license plate. That image is processed through our Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system. Before a plate can move forward in the process, the OCR must meet a 94% confidence threshold. If it does, the plate information is sent to the DMV, which either confirms a match or indicates no match. When there is a match, the DMV provides the most recent address on file for the registered owner.
There are several reasons a plate may not meet that 94% confidence threshold, including obstructed or damaged plates, fraudulent plates, or character misidentification (such as mistaking a "B" for an "8"). When that happens, the image is routed through at least one round of manual review, where a trained reviewer attempts to identify the plate visually before it is sent to the DMV.
While misreads are relatively uncommon compared to successful plate reads, they do happen. The most reliable way for drivers to avoid issues with license plate tolling is to set up an ExpressToll account, which allows tolls to be processed directly, using the windshield transponder, without relying on license plate recognition. It's also important for drivers to keep their address up to date with the Colorado DMV, as required by state law.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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