The Traffic Information and Pricing (TIP) System

The TIP-system concerns a class of systems for collecting and/or disseminating information in relation to traffic, whereby information about individual persons and/or vehicles can be collected and checked on reliability (trustworthiness) in such a way that yet sufficient (privacy) protection can be offered against illegitimate tracing of individual persons and/or vehicles. Also, these systems can easily be prepared for future expansion (extensions), refinements and possible other changes. So, one may start using a simple variation and gradually introduce more and more applications and refinements. TIP-systems can be used, for example, for imposing all sorts of traffic fees, that is, for traffic pricing. In case of road traffic it is, for example, possible to charge for all distances traveled and to relate the fee for each distance unit traveled, if desired, to the place where and/or to the date, the point in time and/or the traffic intensity when that distance unit was traveled, to the brand, model, year of make, gearbox type and engine type of the vehicle used to the gear engaged, the number of revolutions, the fuel consumption, the noise production, the speed and/or speed changes when traveling the distance unit with that vehicle, and/or to the environmental pollution caused. Reducing noise nuisance by aircraft is another example of a possible application. Keywords: electronic toll collection (ETC), traffic pricing, proportionate pricing, continuous pricing, discrete pricing, odometer-based fee, mileage fee, kilometer fee, kilometer tax, road pricing, congestion pricing, pollution pricing, privacy protection, tracing, fraud resistance, controls, checks, verification, identification, semi-identification, agent, hunter, intermediary, reachability, congestion, traffic congestion information, traffic delay, environmental pollution, fuel consumption, noise nuisance, traffic fee, traffic tax, toll, meter reading, odometer, speedometer, tachometer, revolution-counter, automatic calibration, cruise control, rolling tester, taximeter, tachograph, black box.