It is really tricky to avoid toll cameras in a city you’ve never visited, in a vehicle you’ve never driven. Actually, it shouldn’t be hard to do that, but nevertheless an Illinois woman said she got a ticket for evading a toll in San Francisco — while driving a semi-truck she has never driven in a city she’s never been to.

At first she thought the whole thing would just be a joke, reports FOX 2 News in St. Louis. But California authorities didn’t think it was quite so hilarious.

“I noticed immediately it`s from San Francisco,” she explains. “I’ve ever been to San Francisco, so I started reading through it, it turns out I evaded a toll. So we`re laughing about it. (I thought) it`s just going to take a simple phone call to clear this up.”

It should’ve been pretty easy — the photo with the ticket shows that the plate says “apportioned,” even though it has her license plate number. That’s because it’s a plate for a semi truck, not a car. Sometimes when numbers get all used up for plates, truckers get the same letter and number combinations but with that stamp, you see.

“I`m a middle-aged housewife from Illinois. I’ve never owned a semi truck nor have I ever driven one. I’m thinking I`d get a chuckle out of these people. There was no laughter,” she claims.

But instead of just paying the fee and letting her life run its course, she decided to fight it — after all, the driver could continue to flout traffic laws and get her into trouble.

She finally resorted to taking her story to the news when the Bay Area’s FasTrak didn’t clear things up. The news station turned to the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office for help from there, and that office was finally able to convince the California Highway Authority to re-check the footage.

“And once they did that, their response was virtually immediate,” said a rep.

The ticket was finally wiped after that effort, but the woman said she’s still getting tickets. Which means that driver is really committed to blowing through traffic laws or maybe just knows someone else is getting those tickets…

California camera cops find wrong woman in Illinois [FOX 2 News]

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