I just don’t buy it. The UK is going to authorize local municipal authorities to issue parking tickets using video. In other words, they can watch a spot by video and if a certain car is seen to have overstayed its welcome, they can mail the owner a ticket. They are also allowing the enforcement officers to write tickets without putting it on the windshield. Just mail it in.
I think this is absurd. I have mentioned this before, but the whole idea of a parking ticket is deterrence. Getting a ticket five days or more after the fact deters nothing and only makes people madder. If I’m standing there and see the ticket under my windshield wiper and then look at the sign and realize that I broke the rules, I can be angry, but actually only at myself. When I’m home going through my mail and find a ticket and I can’t even remember where I was five days ago and will immediately get my dander up over “big brother” and the like.
This just isn’t good policy. Period. But it’s typical of someone sitting in an office somewhere trying to come up with an “idea” to raise more revenue, the parking public be dammed. If cities want more money, charge more to license a car, but don’t do it by increasing fines and using all sorts of nefarious means to collect the money.
Along the same lines, I have learned that those red light and speed cameras are getting hit hard by the courts. Often they are out of calibration and in some cases work too well. One city noted that they weren’t getting as many fines because people knew they were there and didn’t speed or run the red lights. “We weren’t collecting enough to pay for the cameras.”
Well, la de da. Here’s proof of what we knew all along. The purpose of these suckers wasn’t to save lives or enforce the law, it was to collect money. Our government just HAS to get out of this money grabbing mode. If they don’t…Well remember the reason for the Boston Tea Party. It was a hell of a lot more about taxation than about representation.
(Hat Tip Kyle Cashion)
JVH
