Reminds me of when railways attempted to attach linear barcodes on their train and read it using a similar method

KarTrak!

It was one of the first large-scale commercial applications of barcodes, and at one point 95% of railroad cars were equipped with it. Could've been a success, but it was a few decades too soo, and a handful of small but crucial implementation flaws doomed it to abandonment only a decade later.