12 Comments

they certainly rely on the goodness on their fellow man, down there in Texas.

Tar and feathers … to begin with.

While the article seems to focus on people that park in handicapped spaces, why stop there? Why not have citizens running around creating tickets for everyone that parks illegally?

Yeah, we know they’ll catch the mayor and city council illegally parked, but those folks area always ignored anyway. And the police car that parks next to the fire hydrant while he gets a sandwich? That will get ignored as well.

Maybe the app will show the uneven enforcement of parking laws.

Of course, it is all about the revenue for the city, but for the citizens, it will quickly become a matter of vigilante “justice” and revenge. If there is an app for it, there is a way to fake the pictures and the data.

Let the rooting of phones begin in 5….4….3….2….

“There’s really no better enforcement tool than our citizens policing themselves,”

Used to be peer pressure, shaming, shunning, and similar social means would often be sufficient to keep social order. But now folks are willing to turn all of this over to Big Brother. It’s all well and good, until these same advocates of tattling get outed for the first time.

80% to 90% of the disability spots in Long Island are taken by non-disabled with illegally used permits. Maybe they got the permit for grandma, but grandma has not been in the car for several years.

Authentically disabled folks suffer needlessly since all the disabled spots are hogged by fakers.

What Austin is considering is a form of deputizing more folks to enforce the law, and i say BRAVO!

I’d like to see a similar app for moving violations. The guy who blasted through a red light and nearly killed me last night ought to get one. (Since these things happen by surprise, taking a photo would be difficult, but I’m quite willing to show up to prosecute a ticket if the police would allow me to write one.)

maybe its just my perception, but just about everywhere I go here in Wisconsin, the parking spots for the disabled are always available. I personally think giving a non officer the ability to give out citations for enforcing this law is just asking for lots of trouble.

Just put a nail behind their tire.

I have never seen parking spots for people with disabilities fully utilized. Most of the time they are completely empty. So Smart Dude is incorrect when he claims in his comment above that “Authentically disabled folks suffer needlessly since all the disabled spots are hogged by fakers.”

I don’t get too upset when that wheelchair symbol ruins my find of a convenient parking space. That space would have been filled by somebody else who is now parked far away in the lot.

People seem to like to enforce the parking space rule. If they have to sacrifice, then, by golly, so should you. Actually the vast numbers of parking areas, such at my bank branch, are modest so that the furthest away spot is actually quite close and the advantage of the dedicated space to people with disabilities is absurdly small. At the other extreme are the many acres of parking at Danbury Fair Mall. The special parking spaces close to the entrances are still further away then all of the spaces at my bank branch. The stores inside the mall take of the area of a small town. Dedicated parking spots seem silly there too.

6John David Galt 11.06.11 at 1:12 pm
I’d like to see a similar app for moving violations. The guy who blasted through a red light and nearly killed me last night ought to get one. (Since these things happen by surprise, taking a photo would be difficult, but I’m quite willing to show up to prosecute a ticket if the police would allow me to write one.)

I don’t what the laws are like in your state, but in Idaho, it is fairly common for other drivers to swear out complaints against other drivers for moving violations. Way it usually happens, some numbskull starts passing people on a two-lane highway, doing 90 in a 65. One of the drivers calls ahead to next county, Deputy pulls guy over starts running license, registration, complaining driver pulls over, adds his statement to the citation as the complaining witness. If ticket goes to court, the complaining driver has to appear for the prosecution.

Here is something interesting
“I am a community policer from way back,” one resident said at the meeting. “I’m also one of the first code compliance volunteers in my neighborhood… Low income people like me can’t even afford a cell phone, so I think if you’re going to allow this you should also expand this ordinance to include the ability of the police department and code compliance to purchase smartphones for their volunteers.”
I guess they have to buy the phones for the “volunteers” to use.

Am I the only one that thinks $511 is rather steep for a parking violation? It would seem illegal parking is far less of a risk to the public’s safety than a moving violation. What’s the fine for running a red light?