Why Colorado License Plate Readers Keep Making This Error 🏷️
The short version: Steve Staeger's investigation shows Colorado's plate-reading cameras are misreading tags and sticking innocent drivers with bogus speeding and toll tickets.
Our Take
Credit to Steve Staeger and his consumer investigation team for digging into something we've been saying for years: these camera systems are sold as infallible, but they're not. When an algorithm misreads a character or two on a plate, the result isn't a harmless glitch — it's a real person getting a fine, a toll bill, or worse, a police stop for a car they don't own and may never have seen.
What makes this especially galling is the burden-shifting built into the whole system. The error happens on the vendor's end, but the driver is the one who has to prove a negative, take time off work, and navigate an appeals process that assumes the machine is right until you fight your way out. That's the quiet cost of automating law enforcement and tolling: convenience for agencies, headaches for citizens, and almost zero public accountability for the error rate itself.
If a toll-reading camera can't reliably get a plate right, think about what that means for the thousands of Flock Safety ALPR cameras scanning every car that passes, logging your movements whether you've broken a law or not. Check our camera map to see what's watching your own commute, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back on unchecked plate surveillance in your community.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Steve Staeger - Consumer Investigator, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.