Being a poor student; rich enough to have a car but too poor to afford a parking space, I park on the street and move my car once in a while, so I don’t get a ticket. Since I park in the spots where there are time limits, I often go over the limit and from time to time get a parking ticket; not often enough to be worth buying a parking space…
So, my question is: how do the parking cops know that my car has been there for more than the limit. Do they take note of the license plates and then come back later and look who is still there? How do they know that I didn’t go away for half and hour and then parked again in the exact same spot?
To be a little more explicit, the tire is marked in a particular spot such as putting the mark at the bottom of the tire. If you drive around, return and park in the same space, the chance that the mark will again be at that particular spot, i.e. the bottom of the tire, is virtually nil. If it does happen to be there, well you got away with one.
Parking police are evil, and as such have powers from the Dark Lord Satan. Known collectively as “The Parking MAN” (a subsidiary of the MAN, himself) the parking officers are always the most efficient workers on a campus and parking tickets can never ever be completely avoided. Seemingly painfully stupid in normal human intellect, the dark minions of Parking Ticket Agencies somehow possess none but the highest acumen (and it seems, pleasure) in busting freeloaders like myself.
I know this having just graduated from college in the same situation as DrLiver, and incurring over 1,000 dollars American in fines over four years (which, if you can believe, was actually less than buying and renewing a permit each session).:smack:
One of my dorm-mates won himself a ticket for walking out to his car, releasing the parking brake, and drifting it back about six inches.
The meter attendant, who happened to be a couple cars away at the time, handed his ticket to him as he got out of the car (he was already over the limit–she just hadn’t written him up yet). Dude always made sure to look around before trying that trick again.
So, do you think I could go away with it by just moving my car a few inches forward or backwards?
Wyld Stallyn: you’re right, the campus parking police is a lot worse than the city parking police; they’re on you really fast! So far I’m at around $300 CAD for a year and a half; which is a LOT less than what I would have paid for buying a spot ($100 per month)
I always have to push “submit reply” a bajillion times before it goes through and when it finally does, there are like 10 more posts explaining exactly what I was trying to ask…
anyway…
thanks a lot!
and I would also like to know: could you get away with just erasing the chalk?
See Sofa King’s post. Parking police get really unhappy when you try to cheat. If they suspect you are doing this, they will pay close attention and then you get an even bigger fine.
“Back in my day” the campus parking police marked across the tread as well as the sidewall. Then if you drove off, the tread mark would be erased. So they looked for the sidewall mark and checked to see if the tread mark was still there. Note that this meant that the mark couldn’t be placed at the bottom and if the sidewall mark ended up at the bottom (so they couldn’t tell), this mean that the car had been driven. YMMV.
I believe that if you are caught erasing the chalk on your tires here in California, you can be arrested and charged with a far more serious offense than a parking ticket.
In California, parking tickets are handled as civil matters, but erasing the chalk is a criminal matter.
“Earlier this week, police made the ridiculous argument that it was OK to write a $28 ticket to a man who committed the not-so-heinous crime of leaving his headlights on while his car was parked.”
It might be difficult to erase the chalk without leaving some kind of telltale smudge. If the cop suspects erasing, I bet you’ll get extremely close scrutiny for a long time. Might be easier and less hazardous to move the car.
In the District of Columbia, the law was that the time limit applied to parking on the whole length of the block. Just rolling into a different space did not restart the clock.
In most states erasing the chalk is a misdemeanor called something like “obstructing official business.” In Ohio, for example, it is punishable by up to three months in jail and a $750 fine.
Parking officers also have ways of catching erasers, such as marking tires with black ink, and noting license plates.
A good article from the Houston Chronicle about parking tickets, with some tips for avoiding them.
Good grief! How much did a permit cost? Where I am, it’s $155 for the Fall-Spring academic year, and another…$50ish for the summer permit (summer cost is an estimate - I won’t know until that actually gets here).