Free Republic

Legislation introduced in Washington, D.C., would allow certain residents to write out parking tickets to their neighbors. The goal of the omnibus Vision Zero bill, from council member Charles Allen of Ward 6, is to decrease the number of traffic accidents with pedestrians and cyclists. Charles Allen ✔ @charlesallen A few highlights: - Makes some smart changes to our laws, like ending “right on red” and lowering speeds on residential streets to 20 MPH. - Changes the presumption at residential intersections to make them all-way stops. Charles Allen ✔ @charlesallen - Adds substantial fines when contractors & utilities don’t replace...

Parking in Manhattan is difficult enough for limousine, truck and delivery drivers. But they faced an additional challenge this week when New York City rolled out new regulations in the heart of Midtown. Parking and loading is now prohibited on both sides of most blocks between Sixth Avenue and Madison Avenue from 45th Street to 50th Street during morning and evening rush hours, according to a new regulation, which began April 16. The six-month pilot program, called Clear Curbs, is one of several programs launched by the city to combat congestion. In the first three days of the program, officers...

Laws are for plebes: State lawmakers are getting special perks because of their legislative license plates.The plates issued to the 100 state lawmakers and representatives elected to serve Colorado are preventing them not only from receiving photo radar tickets but also collection notices from past due parking tickets.The legislative plates are not entered into the Colorado DMV database, so when photo radar cameras catch these drivers speeding, they never received tickets. That’s because of a loophole that doesn’t allow the City of Denver to electronically cross-reference those plates with a home address. The same “loophole” affects parking tickets and the...

This was the moment traffic wardens swooped outside a church and slapped parking tickets on cars while their owners were at morning mass. Members of the congregation—some of them in wheelchairs—could be seen arguing with the unrepentant wardens for 30 minutes. But the council workers, who had even targeted cars with blue disabled badges, which were allowed to park, refused to back down. The bizarre scene unfolded on Sunday morning outside Our Lady and St. Hubert church in Oldbury, West Midlands. …

What do speed traps, parking tickets, toll roads, speed cameras and red light cameras all have in common? They are all major revenue sources for state and local governments. All over America today there are state and local governments that are drowning in debt. Many have chosen to use "traffic enforcement" as a way to raise desperately needed revenue. According to the National Motorist Association, issuing speeding tickets raises somewhere between 4.5 billion and 6 billion dollars in the United States each year. And the average price of a speeding ticket just keeps going up. Today, the national average is...

The Astounding Story Of How A Car Worth $600 Racked Up Over $100,000 In Parking Tickets It might just be a world record. At the very least one particular car has set a City of Chicago record for receiving the most parking violations ever and accumulating the most parking fines in the city's history. The city claims Jennifer Fitzgerald owes over $100,000 in parking tickets. And no, that's not a typo or a few misplaced zeros on the end. The amount is actually 105,761 dollars and 80 cents to be precise. This is the total mind boggling debt the City...

One reason Barack Obama may think the Cambridge Police Department is "stupid" is that he has a grudge against the law enforcement agency. Obama, who attended Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991, lived in Cambridge, and apparently didn't like the fact he was frequently hit with parking tickets. In all Obama received 17 tickets for parking violations -- and never paid 15 of them until he was exposed by a local Massachusetts newspaper as a scofflaw.

One reason Barack Obama may think the Cambridge Police Department is "stupid" is that he has a grudge against the law enforcement agency. Obama, who attended Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991, lived in Cambridge, and apparently didn't like the fact he was frequently hit with parking tickets. In all Obama received 17 tickets for parking violations -- and never paid 15 of them until he was exposed by a local Massachusetts newspaper as a scofflaw. According to a 2007 Associated Press story, Obama was a parking ticket deadbeat for more than a decade -- and only felt the...

Before Barack Obama was a United States senator and a presidential hopeful, he was a Harvard University law student living in Somerville who parked in bus stops and accumulated hundreds of dollars in parking tickets. And for nearly two decades those parking tickets went unpaid, until a representative of Obama’s settled all his outstanding debts with Cambridge’s Traffic, Parking and Transportation Department Jan. 26. Obama attended Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991. During his time at Harvard, Obama lived at 365 Broadway in Somerville, according to his parking tickets. Records from the Cambridge Traffic, Parking and Transportation office show...

A program intended to catch D.C. residents who have not registered their cars also is netting motorists coming to the city to see friends or patronize clubs or restaurants. "I thought this was an April Fools' joke," said Thomas Kollins, a 64-year-old Springfield resident who left a lounge in the city last month to find a warning notice on the windshield of his 2003 Toyota Camry. "I really did — because it's so absurd." The Registration of Out of State Automobiles (ROSA) program looks for those who have not registered their cars with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) within...

CCTV cameras to be used to issue parking tickets Last updated at 20:22pm on 24.03.08    New regulations: Councils will have the power to use video footage to issue fines where it is deemed impractical for wardens to hand out tickets CCTV cameras will be used to enforce parking restrictions and issue tickets under regulations due to come into force next week. Councils will be given the power to use video footage to hand out fines where it is deemed impractical for traffic wardens to issue tickets in person.A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport (DfT) said it would...

D.C. parking officers have been allowed to get away with flouting the laws they're paid to enforce. Many officers have been leaving their private vehicles parked illegally in front of the city's public works complex in Northeast before fanning across the District in city-issued cars to ticket other motorists. On a typical day last week, six vehicles were parked all day in tow-away zones in front of the complex, in the 2000 and 2100 blocks of West Virginia Avenue Northeast. Seven were parked in the driveway of a nearby warehouse. One was parked three feet from a fire hydrant, and...

3/22/2007 Florida: City to Seize Homes Over a $5 Parking Ticket Brooksville, Florida proposes to foreclose homes and seize cars over less than $20 in parking tickets. The city council in Brooksville, Florida voted this week to advance a proposal granting city officials the authority to place liens and foreclose on the homes of motorists accused of failing to pay a single $5 parking ticket. Non-homeowners face having their vehicles seized if accused of not paying three parking offenses. According to the proposed ordinance, a vehicle owner must pay a parking fine within 72 hours if a meter maid claims...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama got more than an education when he attended Harvard Law School in the late 1980s. He also got a healthy stack of parking tickets, most of which he never paid. The Illinois Senator shelled out $375 in January -- two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign -- to finally pay for 15 outstanding parking tickets and their associated late fees. The story was first reported Wednesday by The Somerville News. Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, mostly for parking in a bus stop, parking without a resident permit...

PEORIA - Three parking tickets and a tow-away sticker had been placed on the sport utility vehicle in which a dead man's body was found last week. Peoria police confirmed someone in the parking-enforcement division had issued the tickets and sticker to the SUV, which was parked illegally on Hamilton Boulevard near Methodist Medical Center. The ticket writer did not see the body of Michael T. Hudson, a 46-year-old Decatur man reported missing Feb. 6, inside the black Mercedes. His body was discovered in the back seat Feb. 9, when someone walked by and noticed a foot against the passenger-side,...

After Years Outside Law, Diplomats Come In From Cold POSTED: 12:43 pm EST December 9, 2005 NEW YORK -- For years, United Nations diplomats were notorious for running up millions of dollars in parking tickets -- then laughing off New York City's attempts to collect. Diplomatic immunity meant there was little U.S. courts could do about it, but the city's thousands of foreign officials have largely changed their ways since a threatened crackdown three years ago. New York's finance department says diplomats have gotten 90 percent fewer tickets since late 2002, when the U.S. threatened to revoke the plates of...

Melbourne council is unlikely to collect a parking fine imposed on a 71-year-old man for exceeding his alloted time in the car park of the Croydon Market shopping centre since he had lain dead for "several days" in the vehicle when an enforcement officer moved in. The man had been reported missing nine days previously and was known to be "seriously ill", The Mayor of the eastern suburb of Maroondah, Paul Denham, explained that the "parking officer had not noticed the man when he attached the parking fine to the windscreen", offering: "The parking bays are 90-degree with cars parked...

Kerry's expenses: That's the tickets By Andrew Miga Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - Updated: 08:36 AM EST WASHINGTON - Sen. John F. Kerry tapped campaign funds for Red Sox tickets and to pay nearly $300 in overdue Boston parking tickets in March, records show. Kerry's Senate campaign committee wrote a $287 check to the City of Boston Parking Clerk on March 31, 2005. The Bay State senator listed ``travel expense'' as the purpose for the expenditure. Kerry leased a car for campaign-related travel in Massachusetts that was cited for about a half-dozen parking tickets in Boston. Most of the tickets...

Man Fined for Allegedly Using Foul Bills BURLINGTON, Iowa - A psychiatrist who police say smeared excrement on dollars bills used to pay a parking ticket has been fined $250. Ronald Preston McPike, 52, of Bonaparte, was charged with harassment of a public official after officials received an envelop in July labeled "Foreign brown substance on bills." The envelope contained several dollar bills and a parking ticket made up to McPike, police said. Tests indicated the brown substance was fecal matter that had been smeared on the bills. McPike told police the money fell into a toilet and was retrieved...

Scofflaw diplomats may get their nations' aid cut By Jim Abrams Associated Press Web Posted : 10/29/2003 12:00 AM WASHINGTON — Countries whose envoys fail to pay their parking tickets could lose part of their foreign aid under a measure approved by the Senate Tuesday. "If a diplomat ignores a parking ticket, we send him foreign aid. That makes no sense," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who sponsored the amendment to a foreign aid spending bill with fellow New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The amendment, approved by a voice vote, would reduce a country's foreign aid package by whatever...