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Virginia: Toll Road Accuses 8000 Innocent Motorists of Cheating
Virginia Department of Transportation to refund $105,000 in camera tickets wrongly issued to toll road users.

Innocent motorists driving on the Dulles Toll Road and Powhite Parkway Extension in Virginia have been accused of skipping out on tolls. The system's ticket cameras photographed 8000 motorists either for no reason, or because E-ZPass sensors failed to record payment properly. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) admitted that it mailed $200,000 worth of citations for violations that never happened.

"We conducted an internal review of our E-Z Pass system and found that it was not properly filtering out suspect violations," VDOT Communications Project Manager Shannon Marshall told WTOP radio.

As a result of the discovery, some $105,000 that had already been collected will be refunded. The agency has already mailed notices to those affected and has told WTOP that stricter controls will be used in the ticketing process. Motorists around the country have found similar errors in electronic transponders. In some cases, individual drivers have seen bills that can exceed $10,000 due to errors in their toll road account.

Source:E-Z Pass Glitch Falsely Tickets Thousands (WTOP Radio (DC), 9/11/2007)

Not entirely the same situation, but recently I went through the tag ane on the M6 toll; the barrier opened but my tag didn't beep. I wasn't sure if I had been charged, so when I got to the office I emailed the M6 toll tag people and said I wasn't sure if it had beeped, gave them my registration number and tag number, and they emailed back saying that it hadn't been paid and I would be issued a penalty notice. As I had emailed them, they removed the penalty notice and charged my tag.

if I hadn't been listening the first I would have heard about it would be the penalty notice arriving by post.

If there's a barrier...

There isn't. Not on the "EZ Pass" lanes I saw in Florida. There is a toll booth type thing with a camera, (presumably RF) card reader and red/green light. People were obviously used to navigating this system and... shall we say they refrained from slowing down more than was necessary. In fact some went through quite swiftly. The red/green light was flashing like a disco! No pass detected presumably triggers the numberplate reading camera and then a fine gets sent out.

Handy said "the barrier opened".

Oh yes... And if I had read what you quoted I might have noticed...
I've not been on the M6 toll road. I could well imagine it would have a barrier "to slow people down"