At my last job, I worked on a side street. They have Muni-Meters. It’s mostly trucks making deliveries and pickups.
I saw a meter maid giving out a ticket. The driver complained that the Muni-Meter was broken. The meter maid said that isn’t a valid defense. He’s required to walk to the next one.
I didn’t say anything. I should have. There’s an interesting legal loophole for Muni-Meters. However, I’m not 100% sure this is correct.
There’s a “grace period” of 5-15 minutes. (I’m not sure exactly.) If you get parking ticket with timestamp “2:55″, and you have a Muni-Meter receipt with a timestamp of “2:59″, that’s an absolute defense. You can contest the ticket and win.
The “grace period” solves a problem with Muni Meters. You can park your car and go to the Muni Meter. You get a parking ticket while you’re making the purchase. That was a common enough problem, that a specific exemption was added to the law.
If you are parked at a Muni-Meter spot and see a meter maid giving you a ticket, run to the Muni-Meter and purchase a parking ticket. If the timestamp is close, you can contest the ticket and win. Don’t waste time arguing with the meter maid.
I should have given the driver a helpful tip. I knew about that loophole. I said nothing. However, I’m not 100% sure that’s correct.
I live in the United Kingdom.
We have to purchase residents’ parking permits if we want to park a car outside our very own houses. That was introduced something like 20 years ago.
The traffic wardens (they are now called community enforcement officers) have trouble catching motorists out.
So they wait for builders to park in a street and while they are busy unloading their van, they fix a ticket to their vehicle.
One parking warden in our street openly admitted his job is now effectively to prey on builders when they visit to repair residential properties.
Effectively this is an extra tax on getting your house repaired!
Working for a local council in the United Kingdom is a very profitable job.
Planning permission results in a rather nice stream of cash for individuals.
The managers and executives are on salaries of hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, if not millions.
They have gold plated pensions.
And all they have to do is collect the rubbish every two weeks!!!!
Where there is muck, there is brass! But it doesn’t take much brains just dump all the rubbish in a big hole.
That’s the problem with parking and traffic laws. They are used as a revenue enhancer rather than for enforcement.
If the policeman has a ticket quota, the incentive is to write lots of questionable tickets.
If you get a ticket for $100, the incentive is to pay it rather than contest it. If you contest the ticket, you must take a day off work, worth more than $100. If you contest the ticket, you probably won’t win.
Tickets are a stealth tax increase, rather than for enforcement.
Off-topic, but the Artist Taxi Driver has done so well on this one. I’m sure a minute or two went by before he raised his voice. The video is about the UK government committing crimes and the police doing precisely nothing about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMj9dXBA_0s&list=UUGThM-ZZBba1Zl9rU-XeR-A&index=2&feature=plcp