truck windshield lights

Transportation, Travel and Trips
1
hoping that my curiosity wouldn't be the doom of some kitten, i would like to pose a question that has been tickling my neurons for a while now. i am sure the great wisdom of ef, which has tackled the age old questions of whether one can survive with 120K in CH and where one could buy brown sugar, will be able to enlighten me:

during drives within the city roads, i see trucks that have some square-ish device stuck to the windshield, with LEDs on the edges. sometimes i see one with left, upper and right edges lit, and sometimes just upper and right edges lit. is it a signaling device to display some kind of status, or is it some device that happens to have lights on its back side?

i finally managed to get a picture from a parked truck. the thing on the windshield on the bottom middle side.

2
I believe it is a payment system on how they pay tolls .

But I might be wrong

3
Apparently there's a large market for these things.

Almost as cool as under-body neon lights in the early 90s.

The windscreen -- the final frontier of vehicle customization?

4
Introducing the ENFDWS4 LED light thing which blinks in different colors along a linear array axis! Buy one today!

They have some real marketing geniuses at that firm.

5
Basically this. Not tolls in the Italian motorway sense, rather a charge for trucks for using the entire Swiss road network. It's known as LSVA ( L eistungsabhängige S chwer v erkehrs a bgabe).

They pay CHF 0.0228 per Tonne and Kilometer.

6
I was also wondering that, thanks for bringing it up

7
It also comes with an "on-off" switch so that you can turn it on and off. I think they have some engineering wizards too!

8
I tought it was kind of a road and/or speed tracking system

I think I have seen that these devices can print out report like papers that can be checked by officials.

9
Big grin, you boys , thanks for the chuckle of the day

This thing is called the LSVA, I even found the link in english.

It has to do with taxes .......the little lamps show a kind of code from the outside of the lorry.

http://www.ezv.admin.ch/zollinfo_fir...x.html?lang=en

10
==> http://www.emotachsimulation.ch/en

thanks, ef. i knew i would find the answers here. i feel like even the clouds have cleared up, and it is shining outside now

11
The light rows on those boxes on the trucks are scanned by sensors mounted on those strange bridges across motorways that you can see in various places in Switzerland, looking like signal bridges across railroad tracks. You may have mistaken them for speed traps (a bit too conspicuous, though).