BLAZING SPEED & REMARKABLE ACCURACY

About eight million vehicle images are captured each month at tollgates in Houston, TX. These images are captured via the vehicle’s license plate by optical character recognition (OCR) and by reviewing the “vehicle history” – such as operator information, traffic violations, and more. Due to the ever-increasing volume of images that must be captured, reviewed, and processed, an accurate, high-speed software is an absolute must-have for tolling authorities in cities, counties, and states counties across the nation.

Murray & James’ Toll Road IT Solution is a proven, fully automated OCR License Plate Recognition (LPR) System designed to increase revenues, improve efficiencies, lower costs, and reduce risk. Our software runs at a 99.9995%-character recognition accuracy — a rate which is above the industry average — and is connected to multiple current data sources to create an extremely fast, highly effective workflow.

All data files are crossed-checked and original sources may vary based on the vehicle’s OCR result. For example, vehicles in Texas are processed using the in-state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records, whereas data for out-of-state visitors’ plates are easily integrated to secure the relevant information for evaluation. Manual reviews are also conducted throughout the image processing to ensure an exceptional accuracy rate.

After the plates are analyzed, vehicles that violate toll requirements or have outstanding tickets are flagged, and the plate’s owner is billed automatically. If the OCR result fails, violations may be sent out to the wrong party, damaging the credibility of tolling authority. In addition, without fool-proof accuracy, drivers can easily challenge a license plate reading which means the tolling authority may be held liable for false ticketing. To protect the small accuracy fail window, Murray & James’ Toll Road IT Solution includes a ‘missed image’ allotment frame of 500 images. This small but important feature minimizes failed character recognition and improves recognition for plates that are simply undetectable.

Any violation (that is recorded) must be distributed to the responsible party within a timely matter. From the moment the plate number is captured to full data processing, there is a short 24-hour turnover rate. Otherwise, the entire process may fall behind vehicle count, creating a large data backlog for the tolling authority which may become insurmountable.

Murray & James’ OCR technology can be applied to solve challenges beyond toll gates. Parking garages are also incorporating plate reading to detect vehicle permits and time stamps for example. Other customers have successfully leveraged OCR technology for document scanning too.

Our OCR software is browser-based, which enhances the vehicle plates by magnifying the characters. This directly affects overall accuracy, which —next to speed — is our system’s primary goal. Currently our Toll Road Solution is active in Texas, and trials in both Oklahoma and Illinois have been successful.

To find out more about how partnering with Murray & James can add value to your agency, email info@murrayandjames.com.