How to avoid being charged extra time fees when resting at highway service areas during a self-driving tour?

In 2017, domestic tourism reached 5.001 billion trips, a 12.8% increase year-on-year; inbound and outbound tourism totaled 270 million trips, a 3.7% increase year-on-year; and total tourism revenue reached 5.4 trillion yuan, a 15.1% increase, indicating huge potential for the tourism market. RV tourism has seen an annual growth rate of approximately 85% in the past two years. By 2020, the Chinese RV market is expected to achieve a new breakthrough, with annual sales projected to exceed 50,000 units.

Self-driving tours offer people more autonomy in terms of time and space, allowing them to explore novel travel destinations. Driving a motorhome allows for spontaneous travel-going wherever you want, stopping whenever you want, eating whenever you want, and staying wherever you want. Therefore, motorhome self-driving tours are poised to become one of the most important travel methods of the future. With a motorhome, you can cook a delicious and clean meal in a convenient kitchen when you're hungry; when you're tired, you can enjoy a good night's sleep in a comfortable bed-truly eating and sleeping whenever you want. It has become a new type of leisure travel, perfectly combining travel and home, allowing you to travel with your home, adding enjoyment to people's travel and leisure lives.

This leads to many problems associated with self-driving tours, including highway overtime fees, which are frustrating and addictive to unexpected charges, ruining a joyful trip. Many people don't understand highway overtime fees, believing that as long as they take a card when entering the highway and pay at the toll station, they're fine. Actually, if your driving time on the highway exceeds 24 hours, or your driving time on the same highway exceeds 12 hours, you will need to pay an overtime fee. How is the highway overtime fee calculated? It's calculated based on the distance between your entrance and exit, at a minimum speed of 60 km/h. Exceeding this time will incur a charge of 40 yuan per hour.

Why would he incur an overtime fee on the highway? In the early days of highway operation, toll stations couldn't accurately track vehicle entry and exit, allowing some vehicles to evade tolls by exchanging toll cards or turning around at service areas. This regulation primarily aims to combat toll evasion and improve highway efficiency.

The advantage of a road trip in a motorhome is that you can sleep and eat whenever you want. However, you'll definitely exceed the allotted driving time. If you stay overnight at a service area along the highway, keep all receipts. If you're not staying overnight and are just resting at a service area or sleeping in your vehicle, make sure you have proof of your stay, such as receipts, vehicle repair receipts, and other documentation. This will prevent tollbooth staff from charging you overtime fees.

If you don't rest at a service area hotel, how can you avoid being charged extra highway time fees? Here are a few tips.

The first method: Enter a highway service area, buy something there, get a receipt, and take a photo for future reference. When you leave, buy something again. This way you have physical evidence to show the toll collector and avoid being charged an overtime fee.

The second method is to find a staff member to issue a certificate. However, this method is not easy to find, and you may not be able to find the right person.

The third method: Remember the time you enter and exit the service area, and take a video or photo to show the staff. If you don't believe it, ask the staff to check the surveillance footage. Usually, they will just take a look and let you through.

Actually, the highway overtime fee mainly applies to large trucks. If you are driving a small passenger vehicle, just tell the toll collector the reason, and they will most likely let you through without asking for any information. Hope this helps.

A reminder to those driving towed caravans: if you are using ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) and your timeout period has expired, please do not use the ETC lane. Because if your timeout period has expired, the barrier will not open automatically, and you will need to reverse and use the manual lane.