Automatic parking disc gave me a parking ticket

Regna@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 73 points –

I was reminded of this when I read a “Shower thoughts” post about clocks.

Where I live, there usually is free parking outside of stores and malls, but limited to a short time, such as 15 minutes or a couple of hours. People have parking discs that they rotate to show when they arrived, and put the discs up visible behind their windshields in their cars.

I have an automatic parking timer displayed in my windshield, that shows the time when I parked rounded up to the nearest half/whole hour. It’s a ”set and forget” thing, which auto adjusts to daylight savings. However, it speeds up 1 - 2 minutes a week, which I didn't see as it rounds up the time, but I found out after a few months.

Once after parking, I took a quick dash into the store, took maybe 5 minutes. When I got back I had received a fine for the equivalent of 80 € for ”parking for 23 hours in a 2 hour spot”. They apparently don’t have to wait five minutes to write out the ticket if the parking timer was so off.

I didn’t contest the ticket, I considered it a learning experience and a reminder to never blindly trust technology.

27

This is the analogue version of what OP is describing, VERY common here.

A flat, blue plastic device with a white dial to indicate arrival time

Precisely, thank you. I was going to post an image, but whenever I added the image when posting the post stalled. Fixed now.

Wow, that's frustrating. I've never heard of such a device. Why is it up to you to proclaim how long you've been parking there? Where do you live? Everywhere I've been (in the US) it's up to parking enforcement to determine if a car has been there too long or not.

In France, maybe other places in Europe, some parking spots require you to have a "parking disc" as we call it, set to your time of arrival.

What stops people from lying about when they arrived?

Nothing really, but if you arrive at 2pm, set your disk to 3pm and the warden comes by at 2:30pm he'll probably figure out what you're up to.

That is probably what the warden assumed the op was actually doing, but the way they get you is if you have set it forward by 30mim say, but then the wardens clock.you within those 30min the time will be off by 23.30 hours

Sweden allows for half hours in setting the time rounded upwards, so if I arrive at 11:32, I can set the time to 12:00. But not to 12:30.

This varies from country to country though, some (France?) allow 15 minutes, some (Norway?) require the exact time.

If a parking enforcement person goes by at 9.45 and sees it set to, say 10.15, you have a problem.

Yeah. In some places they chalk the tires to track if the car has been sitting too long. It's not the drivers job to track that. Why should it be?

I don't even have a driver's license so no horse in this race but they're using a parking space for free so I don't think it's too much to ask to cooperate and spend 10 seconds setting a dial.

Of course it's primarily the drivers job to make sure they don't park illegally, the enforcement is there only to catch those who do not. Setting a disk that states when you got there is not a big requirement but does help make sure some drivers don't overstay on limited parking space.

Driving (or owning) a car is not a common right, it's a proviledge to be earned by being able to show you are responsible enough to steer a vehicle that can very easily end up maiming or killing someone. This is why you need a license to drive and why it is ok to give added responsibilities, like using a parking disc if needed. And if you fail to fill these responsibilities, you should be fined or in more serious cases lose your license.

Around here it was made illegal to chalk the tires. Now they chalk the ground right next to the tire but I never figured out how they know it’s not a different car by the time they come around. I’ve never seen different colored chalks either.

I'm guessing the enforcer has a very specific spot they mark, i.e. the exact center or precisely in line with the valve. If another car parks there, it probably will be far enough off to be confident it's a new car.

Got a pic of said disc, I've never heard of such disc, but am slightly intrigued by it.

The parking disc commonly looks like this:
Swedish/Finnish parking disc

The sign that states times for free parking can look like this:
Parking sign.

My parking disc is digital and once I set the current time and date it’s supposed to be a set-and-forget as it automatically sets the (rounded up) time to when I arrived: Automatic parking disc

I'm confused by this device. The point of the parking disc is that you can't change your arrival hour without being there physically. It seems that it would be easy to make a device like this that automatically reset when the time is up. Are these certified in any way?

The automatic ones have to be approved to be legal, there is a limited set of models that are approved in different countries, and they’re recognizable. Plus, parking attendants can take pictures and see if the car is in the same position with a new time when they pass by an hour later.

However, there exist battery driven parking discs that look like normal manual ones, that you set the time manually and then it adjusts every half hour. These are illegal though, and you’ll get fined and possibly even charged legally for using them if discovered.

It’s also illegal to go back to your car every X hours to move the manual disc time forward if the car isn’t moved.

I am confused. Why did you get charged for 23 hours, when you were only there for 5 minutes? Even for a bot that's a massive mistake to make.

In large parts of Europe, the onus is on the car driver/owner to follow the parking rules, either the common street ones or the privately owned ones.

I can’t remember the exact time I parked any more, but let’s say I parked at 10:25. If I had a manual parking disc/timer, I would have set the time manually to 10:30. Then I would have been able to park for two hours from the time on my parking disc/timer.

My automatic timer had crept forward for some weeks, so when I parked it rounded off to one hour later, 11:30, which I didn’t think of to check.

When the parking attendant went by my car, he/she looked at the current time, and the time my parking disc/timer showed was one hour later than the current time. And as they don’t show date of parking, I was in the wrong for
a) having parked there the previous day, or
b) having set the time wrong on purpose, which is also a finable offense.

It showed let's say 12 o'clock when they arrived at 11 o'clock meaning they must have been there for 23 hours.
The tickets are not written up by robots but by someone checking the time on the parking disc.

Sometimes people manually set their parking discs a bit forward so that they have a bit more time but if they get checked in that time frame the ticket is even more expensive than if they overstayed an hour.