Toll booth operators historically experienced terrible respiratory issues from inhaling concentrated vehicle exhaust for eight hours a day, leading to the rapid automation of electronic toll collection systems.

A closer look

Toll booth operators historically experienced terrible respiratory issues from inhaling concentrated vehicle exhaust for eight hours a day, leading to the rapid automation of electronic toll collection systems. We like to pretend that E-ZPass and digital license plate readers were invented entirely for the convenience of speeding up our commute, but it was largely because shoving a human into a tiny plastic box on a busy highway is basically a slow-motion health hazard. For decades, we decided the best way to collect three dollars in loose change was to force a state employee to breathe in the unfiltered smog of ten thousand idling minivans. Now, you can casually blow through the toll plaza at sixty miles per hour without rolling down your window or interacting with another living soul. It is one of the rare instances where replacing humans with robots actually saved lives instead of just maximizing corporate profit margins