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A much simpler "hack" occurred to me recently. Suppose you wanted to store your car for a long time in a gated garage that also holds ZipCars. Drive your car i

A much simpler "hack" occurred to me recently. Suppose you wanted to store your car for a long time in a gated garage that also holds ZipCars. Drive your car in and take a ticket as normal. When it's time to leave, book a ZipCar for one hour. Grab its parking pass and use it to exit the garage with your car. Park on the street nearby, walk the pass back to the ZipCar. Are there typically countermeasures in place for this? Match the pass to the license plate with ANPR? Don't allow an exit without a corresponding entrance? Sucks for the next person to use the ZipCar. But how will they know it was you? Are video archives good enough to find the plate associated with a particular card swipe without a ton of manual effort? (Assume you're trying to store a car for a month or more. At a fairly normal Chicago visitor parking rate of $25 for 2 hours, that would cost $9,000.)

maqr 11y ago
Eventually, somebody would notice the car there and remove it by tow truck. Most garages need parking passes or have assigned numbers or something. When someone complains is usually when someone gets towed.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  Your car does have a parking pass displayed, you just use a different one to exit.
mankyd 11y ago
> Are there typically countermeasures in place for this? The cost of the zip car + the hassle of booking the zipcar, walking from to it to grab the card, driving your car out and finding parking, then walking back to the car. I would emphasize that this method requires finding parking outside the parking garage. Around where I live, that could be a long walk back to the garage (and paying a meter...)
wbsgrepit 11y ago
There are protections to this type of abuse in just about every comercial parking system -- so much so it is not even listed in advantages/features for most of their marketing materials. It is commonly refereed to Single Entrance Gate or Stateful Egress; basically the card is tracked in a stateful database and is either in use (it has been used to enter but not yet to exit) or not in use (it has exited since its last entry). If you attempt to use the card for entry when it is in the "in use" state it will deny and log the action. Edited to add: For the next common "game" on this line "why dont you just walk past and card swipe exit" you will note the cameras positioned at the card terminals at all of these lots for this issue. Basically they will have a record of: your license plates for the entry/exists (the sipes and video systems have timecodes that can be matched) and of your person walking by on foot to trigger the exit state.
- jacobush 11y ago
  At our place there are also some kind of car detector, presumably magnetic coils in the ground. You can't walk past.

maqr 11y ago

Eventually, somebody would notice the car there and remove it by tow truck. Most garages need parking passes or have assigned numbers or something. When someone complains is usually when someone gets towed.

shkkmo 11y ago
Your car does have a parking pass displayed, you just use a different one to exit.

mankyd 11y ago

> Are there typically countermeasures in place for this? The cost of the zip car + the hassle of booking the zipcar, walking from to it to grab the card, driving your car out and finding parking, then walking back to the car. I would emphasize that this method requires finding parking outside the parking garage. Around where I live, that could be a long walk back to the garage (and paying a meter...)

wbsgrepit 11y ago

There are protections to this type of abuse in just about every comercial parking system -- so much so it is not even listed in advantages/features for most of their marketing materials. It is commonly refereed to Single Entrance Gate or Stateful Egress; basically the card is tracked in a stateful database and is either in use (it has been used to enter but not yet to exit) or not in use (it has exited since its last entry). If you attempt to use the card for entry when it is in the "in use" state it will deny and log the action. Edited to add: For the next common "game" on this line "why dont you just walk past and card swipe exit" you will note the cameras positioned at the card terminals at all of these lots for this issue. Basically they will have a record of: your license plates for the entry/exists (the sipes and video systems have timecodes that can be matched) and of your person walking by on foot to trigger the exit state.

jacobush 11y ago
At our place there are also some kind of car detector, presumably magnetic coils in the ground. You can't walk past.