Here’s the deal — a blogger in LA wrote a story about parkers being cited when they park at an honor box lot and not paying. The fellow who got the ticket readily admitted he didn’t pay, but thought the operation looked “dodgy”. Read about it here.
The writer discovered that only government agencies (In California) can write parking tickets. So therefore the parking lot owner who writes tickets is doing so illegally so “Feel free to ignore them.” Which means like our “dodgy” hero above, everyone could just park their cars and not pay at honor lots.
But here’s the rub. Lot owners can “tow” cars that are not paid. So what would you rather do, pay a $50 ticket or $250 to get your towed car back. Of course its not really that simple.
Writing a ticket is relatively easy. If you are high tech, you just hook a printer to your smart phone,download an app, and you are off into the ticket writing sunset. To tow, you have to stand there and wait for the two truck to be sure the right car is towed. Maybe the parker will return before the towing company arrives and you will have one ticked off tow truck driver. And if there are five cars that haven’t paid, you simply ticket five cars. Towing them could take hours.
I wonder about where people’s heads are. You park, knowing that there is a fee, but don’t pay and then when you are caught, boom, you are incensed that you actually have to pay a fine. Whats that all about?
I love this comment from one of the readers of the blog:
What makes the ticket from the city any more “real?” The fact that they have the guns to enforce them? I would rather pay a private property owner the fine if I violated their terms than pay the city to prevent the eventuality of them pulling me over, trying to take my property, and likely injuring, imprisoning, or even murdering me if I try to defend it. No private parking lot owner is going to do that. Not one that will be in business for very long, anyway.
Maybe “murdering” is a bit over the top but I can understand where she is coming from.
Perhaps its time to change the laws a bit so private lot owners can write tickets if necessary. We have private firms working for the city writing tickets, and know that often they don’t do exactly the best job. What’s the harm?
JVH
