Somehow, the following story seems a continuation of this earlier post.

Greetings from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority arrived in our mailbox the other day. The addressee shares my last name, but the first name was not a match. Still, I opened it.

It appears that someone pulling a trailer with Tennessee plates recently ran a toll booth on the NJ Turnpike. An automated camera snapped a photo of the back of the trailer and its license plate, then the communication between the great states of New Jersey and Tennessee associated our address and this not-quite-right name with the offending vehicle. Not-Quite-Right-Name owes the Turnpike Authority the unpaid $6 toll plus a $50 fine. I do not own—nor have ever owned—that trailer or one remotely resembling it. I have not been in New Jersey in years.

The form letter lists three ways to protest: phone, website, or mail (by completing a section on the back of the form and returning it). Since I had a question about what the form asked, I tried the phone option first. After getting lost in phone menu hell, where no option fit my situation, I hung up and tried the web. But the website claimed the “violation number” I’d entered did not match anything in its system. I rechecked that I had faithfully copied the number from the form letter and was rejected again. So I went back to the phone.

This time, I found the place in the phone menu from which entering “0” connected me to another human being. This representative of the Turnpike Authority checked my number, and stated that, as this was a first violation, she could waive the $50 fine if I promptly paid the $6 toll. I declined, explaining that no one of that name lives at this address and that no one at this address owns or has ever owned the vehicle in question. She remarked that I should have marked the envelope “return to sender” instead of opening it.

From this unhelpful start, we finally got to my question. The form has a place for me to indicate that I do not own the vehicle in question. But it also asks that I provide a copy of the vehicle’s registration. Huh? She was less puzzled than I as to how I would access the registration of a vehicle I do not own.

I have returned the form, sans registration copy, disavowing both the vehicle and the name. I suspect I have not heard the last of this.

If we start having unexplained lane closures on the Solway Bridge, I’ll be thinking New Jersey.