(ED. NOTE: This is the third of a multi-part series on toll roads in New Jersey. The author was raised and educated in New York City, spent three years in the Army, and retired after a 34-year career with AT&T. In 2000, Bob joined an ad-hoc committee called Citizens Against Tolls, whose primary goal was the elimination of tolls on the Garden State Parkway.)
Automobile accidents are the unfortunate price we pay for the privilege and freedom of driving on American roads. It comes as no surprise therefore, that every year the New Jersey Highway
Driving on the Parkway at 55 or 65 miles per hour and then having to come to a complete stop just to pay a toll is illogical.
A crash of two minivans on the Parkway by the Somers Point toll plaza in June 2006 serves as an example.
Fortunately, none of the nine people involved in the crash were seriously injured. But it could easily have been otherwise, given that some were pulled from the wreckage just before it burst into flames.
A United Kingdom-based video website showed a car slamming into the Parkway’s Great Egg Harbor toll plaza at high speed on May 10, 2007 and bursting into flames, killing the driver.
Most of us have undoubtedly experienced being cut off by a driver who at the last moment decides to switch lanes to select another tollbooth. Even worse, are drivers who back out of an E-ZPass lane for fear of being assessed a fine because they are not an E-ZPass customer.
Based on data compiled by the New Jersey Department of Transportation for the years 1997 to 2000, the accident rate was four times as high at the Parkway’s 11 barrier toll plazas.
Moreover, in 2002, the average number of toll-related accidents on the Parkway was 1.4 per day or more than 500 per year, which could have been prevented by the eliminating of tolls.
But what about safety for toll collectors? On Feb. 2, 1967, a toll collector became the first employee to lose his life in the line of service, when a truck struck his tollbooth at the Lincoln Tunnel Toll Plaza.
In general, toll collectors have to deal with irate commuters, horns and air pollution caused by car fumes. In addition, as a lone inhabitant of a tollbooth, a toll collector could be a robbery target.
(Next week: The New Jersey Turnpike)
