Autoblog

"NO TAG" license plate creates parking ticket confusion in Florida

Chris Tutor — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal, Humor

Vanity plates can be cool, fun to decrypt, annoying or expensive, depending on your perspective. They can be a creative way to show your willingness to pay higher taxes, but take care in making your choice.

One Florida resident's choice of "NOTAG" on her vanity plate has earned her $8,000 in parking tickets. Apparently, "NO TAG" is what gets written on a citation when an illegally parked car has no plate.

Soon after installing her plate, Carol Schroeder received notice of 135 overdue parking tickets worth almost $8,000. The tickets were written for several different makes and models, and some written before her car was even manufactured.

Ha ha, funny little mistake. Right? Not to the city of Jacksonville, which says the owner of the car owes the money and the city's collection agency agrees. Surely someone will come their senses and make the situation right.

A few years ago, a man in Huntsville, Ala. received a notice that he owed $19,000 in overdue parking fees for a city he'd only been to once. His vanity tag, "XXXXXXX" is the exact thing Birmingham, Ala. cops write on citations for cars without plates. One Birmingham official he contacted said not to worry about it because they were broke and couldn't afford to arrest him anyway. That's comforting. We guess.

"NO TAG" license plate creates parking ticket confusion in Florida originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 May 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NY city council bans alternate side parking shame stickers

Jeff Sabatini — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:31:00 EST

Filed under: Government/Legal

New York City drivers rarely get much to be happy about, but a recent decision by the New York City Council to eliminate the practice of stickering parking violators is bound to be greeted with unanimous joy. Outside of the mayor's office, that is.

Despite The New York Times reporting a 47-0 vote in favor of prohibiting the city's sanitation department from applying the stickers to cars parked in the way of its cleaning crews, the Bloomberg administration was steadfast in its support of the "shame" stickers. They date back to 1987, when the sanitation commissioner launched a pilot program to affix stickers on cars that were parked in the way of street sweepers. Since the stickers are so hard to remove from vehicle windows, they provided an additional motivation above and beyond ticketing, and the Sanitation Department has been using them ever since, much to the chagrin of motorists.

City Council members weren't buying the necessity of continuing to deface residents' vehicles, however. Even if Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoes the bill, the Times says the unanimous vote effectively makes the decision "vetoproof." David G. Greenfield, a councilman from Brooklyn, is quoted as saying, "What makes this such a terrible infraction that you have to be punished in such a serious way? It's not reasonable behavior in the 21st century."

NY city council bans alternate side parking shame stickers originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ATL officers busted for writing parking tickets so they could use spaces and go to lunch

Jeff Glucker — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal, Police/Emergency

Occasionally, there's a lunch spot so good that many will risk the chance of receiving a parking ticket to go with their tasty meal. A few folks in Atlanta have found just such a spot, but they're upset over how the local parking enforcement is handling the situation. Not because the Atlanta Police Department was handing out the tickets, but rather they wrote the tickets to get the cars to move... and then took the spots for themselves.

According to local news outlet WSBTV, a man who chooses to go simply by the name Oscar has supplied cellphone video of cops utilizing the very same illegal spaces that just produced tickets for other motorists. The APD Office of Professional Standards has stated that it's looking into the matter to determine if officers violated any departmental policies.

You can click over to WSBTV.com for the video, and find the rest of their story here.

ATL officers busted for writing parking tickets so they could use spaces and go to lunch originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corporate espionage, lawsuits, public outcry - the dark side of private traffic enforcement

Jonny Lieberman — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal

No one likes parking tickets. We would go so far as to say that everyone hates parking tickets. Well, everyone except for city governments and certain companies in the private sector that profit handsomely from them. How handsomely? Think George Clooney. For instance, the city of Chicago recently leased out its parking enforcement operations for the next seventy five years. Why? For cash, straight up. How much? One billion dollars.

And that's not even where the big money is. The real filthy lucre is in speeding. Again, and even more than above, the numbers are gross. Red light cameras alone generate four billion dollars per year. Good old hand written speeding tickets net their locales ten billion dollars per year. Makes you wonder how city governments ever functioned before Henry Ford. Not as lavishly, that's for sure. But, where there's tons and tons of public money to be made, there's graft. And corruption. And most of all, greed.

Take the case of two private parking companies, Dallas-based Affiliated and Duncan Solutions of Milwaukee. According to a report from MSNBC's Red Tape Chronicles, Duncan is alleged to have been reading Affiliated's email. And not just reading their email, but setting up dummy accounts to quite literally trick Affiliated employees into sending Duncan emails before routing the pilfered messages back to Affiliated via special servers. And according to Affiliated, Duncan engaged in this practice for over two years. Duncan, not surprisingly, denies all wrong doing whatsoever and is anxious to prove it in court.

Not that Affiliated is so sweet and innocent. There were 89,840 complaints against Affiliated in Washington DC in 2005 - the first year they took over parking meter operations from the city. The complaints were up, by the way, from 3,652 the year before. it doesn't stop there. When an Affiliated contract for fifty red light cameras expired that same year, it was discovered that twenty seven of the cameras weren't working. Can you image two better companies to entrust with the collection of public money?

[Source: Red Tape Chronicles | Image: Serge Burton/Getty]

Corporate espionage, lawsuits, public outcry - the dark side of private traffic enforcement originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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