The only time I've ever had a parking ticket (80GBP) was in an area that only accepted payment via phone call. I had no signal, so I decided to leave the vehic

The only time I've ever had a parking ticket (80GBP) was in an area that only accepted payment via phone call. I had no signal, so I decided to leave the vehicle and go to work, I'll pay for it when I get back, humans are generally reasonable folk, aren't they. Came back to a ticket and invested about an hour in trying to fight it before giving up. Since then I am extremely skeptical of 'paying for parking' in general and have tried to find free bays. I'm willing to pay a few quid for parking, I'm not willing to risk a ticket (and the associated general angst at some bureaucrat having the power to arbitrarily steal money from me). I'd appreciate a system that sent me a bill in the post for sitting in a spot and required payment within 2 weeks or something. Penalties for non-immediate-payment seem like an oddly antagonistic policy at this point, given that we have a nationwide database linking car plates to owners. This is probably all different in the US, just adding my 2p. :)