Privacy Fears Weigh on Future Car Tech for Billing Road Use

“Perhaps the single biggest criticism of the RUC system is that it violates travelers’ privacy,” said the Information Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in a 2019 policy guide.

But ITIF believes such fears are overblown. The think tank attempted to overcome such concerns by noting misperceptions surrounding RUC system, including that GPS does not work two-way. “The car knows where it is thanks to the GPS, but the GPS itself does not know where the car is,” ITIF said. “There is no external tracking involved.”