Edson Perin
Are we nearing the end of the tollbooths? Not immediately, I believe, but we will certainly come to this day. Dario Thober, president of the Wernher von Braun Institute and one of the world’s leading specialists in electronic tolls, gave an exclusive interview to IoP Journal about the development of the Free Flow Toll technology, which was pioneered in 2012, on highways in the region of Campinas (SP), by von Braun itself.
We recently reported in the IoP Journal the debut of Free Flow technology on the Rio-Santos highway, implemented by an Austrian company (learn more: Free Flow toll will be implemented first in Rio-Santos), but this is not exactly a technological novelty. In Brazil, the electronic toll systems have a very advanced development and with applications in Brazil and abroad.
Thober also reports on new advances in toll collection technology, during the interview, which no longer rely exclusively on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. Now, even a smartphone can make payments or even the navigation systems that are already built-in to vehicles at the factory. Everything goes through electronic identification.
In addition to toll payments, parking, fuel and even snack bars, there are a myriad of new business opportunities to be explored. Included in this category are the offering of tags, for example, by companies interested in offering benefits to their customers – as some banks have already done -, the creation of various marketing initiatives and other possible discoveries that new technologies allow and that will Braun has been developing.
Click on the photo below and watch the exclusive interview to the IoP Journal by Dario Thober, president of the Wernher von Braun Institute and one of the world’s leading specialists in electronic tolls.
In the case of smartphone payments, Thober mentioned “Sem Parar Pay”, which works through the “Sem Parar” app. After downloading the application, just add the details of a credit card and top up using the payment system. To pay the toll, you must activate the smartphone’s Bluetooth and activate the app, and then go through the manual booth and notify the collector that you will pay using Sem Parar Pay.
Sem Parar Pay is expanding and for the time being, it is accepted at some toll booths in Espírito Santo, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and São Paulo.
