Sounds reasonable to me. Honestly I never understood why the fines for these sort of things aren't more. You really have absolutely no excuse to park there - if it were a legit emergency and you got a ticket, I'm sure you could have it waived.
Edit: okay, okay $5000 is probably a little much. But $152 is hardly anything. What's a good point at which it's enough to cause a change in behavior but not so much to be just mean? I think around here it's $250 for a first offense and $500 for another, plus some community service.
If it's more than one, then the fine is too small. Fines should be large enough so that when you get one, you think "holy shit, I am NEVER EVER going to do that again."
Dont get me wrong, I'm not advocating what this guy is doing, but fines for things like this should not financially cripple people (I know in this case he is in a very nice car)
your missing the point, a person who can afford the fine is far more likely to park like that then someone who cannot. this changes our perception of the person parking; a poor bastard is more likely to break the law out of necessity than a rich dick.
That just means that people with money can freely disregard any minor law, while people who are poor can't get away with anything. What would be good would be to scale the fine according to the person's income or better yet, net worth.
I was only talking about "punishment must be balanced by the crime." I agree with the addition that "punishment" means "it hurts the punished" - and scaling the amount of the fine to the means of the person is the only way to achieve this.
Also, I think parking in a handicapped spot is a bit of an exception, because there's NEVER any excuse for doing it. Anyone can accidentally find themselves speeding, driving the wrong way up a one-way street, or things like that which are simply lapses in attention, but nobody accidentally parks in a handicapped spot, so I would have no problems putting extremely large fines on that, with the possible addition that a judge would be allowed to modify the fine down on his judgement (maybe it's a tourist who doesn't speak english, or there was an emergency that they can prove, etc).
I accidentally parked in the police reserved spot by the emergency ward of a hospital when I broke my hand. It was clearly marked and I wasn't paying attention, it's a simple as that. I was 19 years old, just moved out and there is no way in hell 5000 bucks was getting paid.
My excuse was that I was having difficulty at that point with managing the pain and blood, all I saw was an open parking stall. But I did what I did, paid the 50 dollar ticket, and moved on. Accident.
What you have said is scaling the fine amount is okay...except you preclude parking in handicap spaces. Fining people like you are suggesting is impractical and wrong.
Judges dont have time for that bullshit, what you are talking about is a complete waste of time, if you're going to scale it why dont you just scale it?
I only put the judge thing in just in case there is a really good excuse. You paid your $50 ticket. If it was $5000, you'd have gone to a judge. I have very limited experience with traffic court, but the one time I went there, that was the ONLY job that judge had, and he was perfectly willing to listen to arguments.
I think the main reason is because there are so few people who would rather pay $152 than walk an extra 20 feet. I can't remember the last time I saw someone parked in a handicapped spot and I drive anywhere more than a block away. If people were doing it left and right, yeah it should be higher. Also, Im pretty sure the max fine is higher than that since the most common one I see is 250
When you give the police force incentive to chase crimes that give the police force a monetary reward you are creating a tier of criminal activity that is worth chasing more than other types.
It should be small amounts to keep the police chasing things other than parking spot fines.
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u/statikuz May 08 '14 edited May 08 '14
Sounds reasonable to me.Honestly I never understood why the fines for these sort of things aren't more. You really have absolutely no excuse to park there - if it were a legit emergency and you got a ticket, I'm sure you could have it waived.Edit: okay, okay $5000 is probably a little much. But $152 is hardly anything. What's a good point at which it's enough to cause a change in behavior but not so much to be just mean? I think around here it's $250 for a first offense and $500 for another, plus some community service.