I remember I got a new job just outside of the city, my first day I got 3 fines for parking within 3 meters of a postbox, There was no yellow lines to say you could not nor was it signed. they fined me every 2 hours. cost me $1400 AUD. I never even knew this was a thing. I lived the next 3 weeks on soup. welcome to the city.
You can also contest just fines. In the US fines are used as an undemocratic, regressive tax to raise extra revenue for the government. Everyone should contest every fine so they are unprofitable.
It definitely never hurts to ask. I recently, very absent mindedly, parked in a disabled parking spot and got a $250 fine. Wrote in with my sob story and that I truly do care about this kind of thing, was only there for ten minutes during which time several of the adjacent spots were open, and of course I’m willing to pay the fine as those are the rules... they forgive the whole amount.
Not something I’d abuse, but second chances can be had.
Oh, interesting. Which country? I'll have to keep that in mind. In the <$local> highway code that I had to memorize , it's actually legal to use an unoccupied disabled parking space as a loading/unloading stop (for 10 minutes, say). You're just not allowed to leave your vehicle there -unoccupied- for an extended period of time.
More importantly: parking illegally often endangers or harms other people (e.g. by blocking fire hydrants that might be needed in an emergency, or by impeding the flow of traffic).
Considering that, then the fine should be the monetary equivalent to the worst thing that happened or could happen because of the infraction.
Parking illegally in a specific spot could result in the death of 8 people? then the fine should be 8 * value of life. the value of life is ~ $9M in the US, so the fine should be 72 million dollars.
If the firefighters need to get to a hydrant, they will get to it, car or no car. I think we should do away with fines and just let people assume the risk that if there's a fire, your car windows might be smashed to run a hose through it.
Likewise, if the car is impeding traffic, tow it out of there. The fine does nothing to fix the problem.
I’ve never understood this. The number of parking spaces that can’t be used because of fire hydrants is enormous, most of those hydrants will never be used, and it seems like a car in front of a hydrant would only be a very small delay for firefighters.
Every fire hydrant is thirty feet of unparkable space. Some streets "double up" by putting them at intersections (so it's only ten additional no-parking feet), but that's enough to fit three or four cars.
On the other hand, I'm not sure it's proven that having more parking spaces translates to better outcomes, namely less pollution caused by lowering time spent to find a parking space.
Depends on if the fine is punitive vs compensatory. If the fine is just to offset an inconvenience you’ve caused, there is no reason for it to go up with income.
Specifically, parking. If I park in an illegal place, get a fine, and mentally consider it a fee, that feels alright by me. But if I park in an illegal place with the same intention as above, and don't get a fine, I'm a jerk. It's tough to decouple those two.
Well things are way worse about this in europe than in the US. US justice system is selectively varied compared to others. Europe you just pay the flat fee. In the US you can get a little popular/street justice into it.
I appreciate how nordic countries have a somewhat income balanced fines and practices and they still have decent amount of wealth inequality (much less than US however)
Actually if you look at wealth inequality, the Gini coefficient is higher for the Netherlands and Sweden than for the US. Denmark is pretty close as well. The benefits these countries have is the better life for people at the bottom and less income inequality.
Abundant free parking as a transportation strategy has not been especially wonderful for low-income people, who among other things:
- Often don't have cars at all, and have to walk that much longer to get across all the parking between places they want to be
- Spend a large portion of their incomes on cars, maintenance, fuel, insurance etc. when they even can
- Are required to live further away from productive places by the high cost of e.g. minimum parking requirements and low density ceilings "because traffic"
- Suffer the brunt of air pollution
Parking in a central business district should probably be as much of a luxury as living in one is today, and vice versa.
Oh I agree parking is a bad strategy overall. It shouldn’t be a luxury though, we should just provide better means of public transportation in dense cities.
It’s a solved problem, look at European cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, and many more... But in America robust public transport never gets done for many reasons including that special interests don’t want it to.
Bill Gates doesn’t care about a $200 double parking ticket, in fact it’s probably worth it for him if if saves him time. He has no incentive to abide by that rule. If you scale it with income then everyone actually has skin in the game.
He also could easily avoid the direct fine by having a driver drop him off and idle outside, or just not directly own the vehicle in question.
The point of raising the price accessing any shared asset is to optimize usage of that asset. Otherwise you end up with private enterprises like non-street parking lots eating the profits with nothing going to the rest of the people.
You're not optimizing the usage though, you're just making it so that people who cannot afford won't be able to park. Sure, if you raise the price enough more spots will be open. What purpose could that possibly serve..?
If you don't want non-street parking lots to funnel in all the profit, then you provide efficient and wide-spread public transport.
But why? The true cost of an action is usually independent of personal wealth.
If I keep my car parked in a space and the street sweep needs to miss that spot, the trash that remains has the same negative societal impact whether I'm rich or poor.
If that trash "cost" society $100, why would society subsidize a poor person to park illegally who could only afford to pay $20?
Maybe the average amount of the fine needs to be more than the value of the societal impact.
The purpose of a fine can be seen in at least two ways:
1. Provide recompense to society for the production of a negative externality.
2. Create a disincentive against the production of a negative externality.
If fines could be levied perfectly, automatically and without administration cost, then perhaps you can see the fine as #1, and set the fine at the societal cost.
But, because it costs money to enforce regulations, there's usually some sampling done: if you park illegally, you might not be caught. Because the chance of getting caught is not 100%, and because those who are not caught do not contribute their share of enforcement costs, the fines for a single infraction must be a multiple of the actual harm caused. (Assuming that can even be measured.)
Let's say the harm caused is $20 per infraction, and this is normally enough to disincentive a poor person from parking illegally. If they make a mistake and are subsequently caught, is it better for them to pay $100 (for the harm caused, plus paying for those who weren't caught), even though this may be equivalent to their family's monthly food budget?
As long as $20 fine is enough to:
- provide a strong disincentive, and
- provide recompense
... then that should be enough, no?
The rich person, for whom a $20 fine is not enough of a disincentive, should pay more ($200?). And the money raised can be used to cover negative externalities for those who weren't caught, and overall enforcement costs.
Taken seriously, this would be a very complex system and it would fail to realize its claimed potential.
It only sounds good in low resolution.
Depending on a bunch of hard questions, devils in the details, you’ll end up with dilemmae where neither option is good:
Is parking income net worth, or taxable income? Previous year or trailing? Can you deduct your charity donations before deciding what you’ll pay for parking? What about a company car; is it the company’s income or the driver’s?
We are techies, we can always build a more complicated system; it is our nature:)
A more simple system off the top of my head: you have fine modifier based on your previous year taxes. Your accountant now tells you you have a fine multiplier of 6. When the ticket comes in, it is always addressable to a given entity. Can it be gamed? Of course, just use a car registered to your broke ass cousin. Progressive fines could work just like progressive tax.
You said it wasn't clear from the context that a fine is punitive. I pointed out that context isn't necessary to determine that, as it's clear from the definition of fine.
Do you now agree that fines are punitive?
If so, do you agree that fines need to be set high enough to provide a disincentive, even if that is higher than the average negative externality created by an infraction?
astrea said "Because the fine is punitive, not cost-based.", and I said it is not clear that the fine is not cost based due to lack of context. I don't think any reasonable reading of my comments would lead anyone to believe that I ever thought fines were not punitive, and I feel like you're arguing in bad faith, so cheers.
I thought you were saying it wasn't clear that the fine is punitive. I quoted the comments I read that led me to believe that. If you think I was arguing in bad faith and/or that my reading wasn't reasonable, then that's of course your prerogative, even though I don't agree.
depends on what the fine is for. I'd guess most parking fines are simply for parking in legal paid parking without actually paying. in this case the purpose of the fine is the same as the fee itself: to increase the availability of parking. I don't see any reason to scale the fine here unless you just hate rich people.
in more serious cases (eg, blocking a fire hydrant or alley) simply towing the vehicle seems like penalty enough.
It's challenging to prove who is driving the car at the time of the fine (i.e., parking fine). Therefore, it would be difficult to tie fines to income.
Except the fine is for the car (and hence the owner), so it still works out.
An acceptable middle ground is for fines to scale with the value of a car at registration. And if you can't afford the fines, then don't lend your expensive car to people who don't know how to park.
Coming back to this... People lend their cars all the time - siblings, children, parents, etc. So you cannot pin who was driving the vehicle at the time of the fine. This is why red light cameras are a flat fee. They do not scale based on the number of tickets the car received. You would think that if someone received 30 red light cameras, it is time to increase the fee, but this is not cannot be accomplished without proving who the driver is.
>acceptable middle ground is for fines to scale with the value of a car at registration
The type of car one drives is not at all an indication of their actual finances. Many people, unfortunately, feel the need to impress others by spending money they don't have.
So then the poors won't be able to afford cheap used cars because the rich will drive up the prices because they will want to buy them as commuter shitboxes. And then the fines will scale up in reaction to that increased value. And then everyone will be worse off than we currently are.
I'll be fine, because I already own all my shitboxes, but this is just bad policy.
They need to pay it right? Just require everyone to either show their income or look up their tax info while processing the ticket. They could also off set the cost of processing the info onto the ticket it's self.
Interesting opinion: Fixed fines are inherently unfair to the poor. But prison sentences are inherently unfair to the rich. After all, if you already live in a crowded slum much like a prison cell, and your life is prison-level boring and oppressive already, then going to prison barely costs you anything. But if you live in a mansion and spend all day indulging in the finest luxuries on offer, going to prison is a massive decrease in your quality of life. (source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/30/legal-systems-very-dif...)
This is why all fine-based penalties should scale progressively with income.