I don't know how many counties use a similar system, but in Finland at least, some of the street parking that is out of the city has a time limit attached to it. When I was a kid in Australia, the parking inspectors would mark tires with chalk as they walked around, so they could estimate how long a car had been parked in the same spot. In Finland, the drivers have to use a parking disk, using the next level half hour, as the start point, so if parking at 750, the disk will be set to 800.
This isn't always easy to remember to do and these days, and with the fine being 80€, it is a pretty hefty reminder. For instance, one day I ran into a store with Smallsteps to pick up some hair ties, for a couple euros. Came out and ended up paying 2000% more for them. We were out of the car about 5 mins and it was a shopping center carpark. Most of the shopping center has free and untimed parking, but there is some part of it that is part of a "sub-division" of the center, that has private parking for customers, but it is times.
And these private parks are the worst, because rather than council inspectors, they are policed by private companies whose only revenue is catching people, which means that they are very, very active. After all, they work on commission.
For a long time, the only acceptable parking disk was a blue "approved" disk, and if you used the wrong one, you'd get a fine, even if it was clear you hadn't been there longer. For example, once I was driving a brand new car that didn't have a disk in it. I was delivering it to a customer who'd bought it (long story), but had to have it overnight. So, without a disk, I parked it with a note in the window with the time on it and an explanation, but the next morning, I got a parking ticket. It was a four hour parking spot and the parking period started at 8am. It was 830.
Dicks.
However, a few years ago they changed the laws and it was possible to have other colors than blue... Wild! And then finally, they brought out some digital ones that track the motion of the car and when it stops, sets the time to the next half hour mark.
I finally got one and installed it today.
It has settings for other countries as it seems that for example in Denmark, they use a 15 minute system instead of a half hour. And, it also has some functionality for summer and winter times. Overall though, it is super simple and is just a digital clock that sets a time whenever the car stops moving.
While not quite a set and forget thing as the time limits for parking change and all of the city parking is paid parking anyway, if it saves me from a ticket once in its lifespan, then it has a 250% ROI, as it only cost 30€. It sits in the passenger front window and operates at high and very low temps, so it works all year through Finland.
Not a fan of automating a lot of things, though this is something I do think is a useful thing to automate, because the cost of fine is high, but the value in remembering to put the disk is very low, and also very low in the hierarchy of the memory when there are many other things going on in life. Miss reading a sign and pay too high of a cost.
I hate paying unnecessarily for things and over the years I have collected some pretty annoying fines for stuff, amounting to hundreds and hundreds of euros and often at times when I couldn't afford to pay anything extra. It is one of those Murphy's Law things, where when things are financially tight, that is when the unexpected kick in the wallet is delivered.
My wallet is constantly sore from all the kicking.
But, perhaps this tiny little, relatively low-tech item saves me a few times over the next few years and I can put that money to better use. The funny thing with it is though, I won't know when it saves me, because now that it is automated, I don't know if I would have remembered, or if I would have forgotten to put the disk. And, this is the problem with automation, we become blind, because we no longer get direct feedback.
But, I will park that conversation for another day.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
