A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Hard disagree. This implies that parking abuse is worse if you have a new car than if you have an old one, and that's just not true.
Now, if they were a percentage of income, so that it hits everyone equally (inaptly named “day fine”), I would agree!
But expensive cars also don't imply higher income at all!
That would be unfair towards people like me who are into cars and just spend much more in proportion to my income compared to someone who just wants to go from A to B.
Only fair solution is to make it like north european countries do, based on your income.
In one downtown area i lived in, a private tow company would tow illegally parked cars from allies, street side, etc... Unless the car was a real beater and the owner would be unlikely to pick it up. One of my friends bought a super beater 2 door work truck for 300 bucks, that was his downtown car. He would drive downtown and park it anywhere, and it never got towed.
Based on current value, or value at time of sale though?
If current value, who determines that value?
Every state in the US already does this to prevent the ole 'sold this car for a $1' ruse to lower sales tax.
A data analyst could easily compile average prices from the top 10 online car marketplaces, or whatever lawmakers want to set as the baseline. More likely they would just use blue book and maybe weigh it against the market area.
But that's ignoring certain aspects. If some blue collar fella had spent his free time and money fixing his dad's old Camaro, a car dad bought for 4,000. Now it's still well maintained, numbers matching, original paint, etc. now it's worth 30,000, 40,000 maybe.
Then we have some other c-suite exec in a Tesla of similar market value.
Parking fines based on vehicle value is going to penalize one person much more than the other. Fines should be based on income or total net worth, not the value of a particular piece of property.
That was difficult to type with sticky BBQ fingers.
It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than nothing. If you try and go for perfection, nothing will ever happen.
In your scenario you could easily just have a process to appeal the appraisal, showing it only cost that amount. Rich people wouldn't spend the time to do that, but these hypothetical poor people with fancy cars they repaired themselves would.
Hypothetical poor people? You think people don't repair their own cars?
People can't afford to defend themselves in courts now. So, now you're saying they also have to deal with an appeals process? So, not only is a vehicle value approach short-sighted its also onerous.
In the UK we have https://www.parkers.co.uk/car-valuation/select-manufacturer/
In the USA I think there's an equivalent.
In the US it's https://www.kbb.com/ which I always thought was a household name.
Also a scam, they’re terrible at valuations in both directions. They’ve gotten lazy with fame.
Well they don't give regional numbers, at least anytime I have used it.
Can't really use something national when a used Honda Accord is 5k more expensive in MA than Georgia or Florida, for example.
Unless there's some state level tax implications or a car that's sensitive to rust in the desert that makes the car more or less valuable. I don't see why the national average can't be used?
There's an argument to say a state with a lower average income should have lower fines, but really then might as well have fines based on income / networth
I guess it depends on how heavily it would be weighted in the ticket price. It would suck to get a ticket 3x more expensive, because Geo Metros became retro and your 2,500 shit box is worth 8,000 in your hipster market.
Proportional to income and wealth
All fines should be proportional to income or wealth, otherwise they're only punishing the poor.
This is actually pretty smart
Probably wouldn't work in practice
I drive a wheelchair accessible minivan which is stupidly fucking expensive but not because it's a good or a luxury car. Modifications for the wheelchair access roughly doubled the total cost of the car.
I love the idea of penalties being proportional to income, but we all know cunts like musk will never pay a dime, while regular people will get fucked or ultra-fucked if they are poor.
Yeah so there should be way more reserved spots for cars like yours plus you probably wouldn't park on a side walk, cause you know how frustrating that is. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ