4 ms·

Also it must last for, say, 15 years, be installable by road workers, and deal with abuse from not only the theives, but also vandals and construction workers r

Also it must last for, say, 15 years, be installable by road workers, and deal with abuse from not only the theives, but also vandals and construction workers repairing the road and pavement nearby.

amelius 4y ago
I'd say it's still super easy to vandalize though, by just squeezing a tube of superglue into e.g. the card slot, making sure one isn't caught on CCTV of course.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Luckily, most vandalism doesn't appear to be committed by people with the intelligence to cause real damage, they just spray paint their initials on it, try to set the metal box on fire or scratch or dent the case. There's only so much one can do to defend a 1mm slot that has to accept a plastic card (ditto for coin slots).
noirbot 4y ago
That's part of the issue though, isn't it? Someone paints over the keyboard and you have no idea where anything is because it's not a normal layout for a keyboard. If it was QWERTY and then a numpad, some people would be able to use it blindly, or pull up their phone to check positions.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Like I said above, it's probably an idea that an alphabetical layout is somewhat familiar to everyone, but a QWERTY layout is only familiar to people who type. Not that long ago, fewer people than you might expect were familiar with QWERTY keyboards (no smartphones before about 2006). These machines are also for use by people who have never used a computer or smartphone, and, incurring the elderly people that councils have to consider, they exist. I'm guessing at their reasoning, but "everyone knows QWERTY" is probably not as true as you think, or if it is, it hasn't been so for that long. It could also be an international company that doesn't want to have SKUs for the keypad for every region (eg France uses AZERTY).
  - chaosite 4y ago
    Fine, not everyone knows QWERTY. It's not intuitive, people aren't born with an innate knowledge of a keyboard layout. But you also can't name a layout which is more familiar than QWERTY, and its regional variants (including AZERTY). If you don't want to localize, US QWERTY would probably be the single most familiar layout globally.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    I'm not sure this is true though. As said elsewhere in these comments, the full-keyboard version of this machine is fairly new (last 5-10 years to my memory). It used to just be an up/down arrow for adjusting how much time you wanted, and then it printed a sticker to add to your car window. The new version with the full keyboard is so they can just drive by and scan your license plate and ticket you that way if you overstay your payment. It's not like these are machines from the 90s when not that many people had computers. The addition of the keyboard is specifically something that was done because wireless internet and computer vision improved enough to do away wit the older version. I'd be earnestly curious what percentage of the population that lives in an area with controlled parking like this doesn't interact with a keyboard at least weekly. Even my 99 year old grandfather was sending emails from his computer a decade ago from his farm in the rural US. The target demographic here is A. People who own cars B. who need to park them in urban areas with street parking. Both of those are, for the last decade, likely to own a smartphone, I'd imagine.

Also it must last for, say, 15 years, be installable by road workers, and deal with abuse from not only the theives, but also vandals and construction workers repairing the road and pavement nearby.

amelius 4y ago

I'd say it's still super easy to vandalize though, by just squeezing a tube of superglue into e.g. the card slot, making sure one isn't caught on CCTV of course.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Luckily, most vandalism doesn't appear to be committed by people with the intelligence to cause real damage, they just spray paint their initials on it, try to set the metal box on fire or scratch or dent the case. There's only so much one can do to defend a 1mm slot that has to accept a plastic card (ditto for coin slots).

noirbot 4y ago

That's part of the issue though, isn't it? Someone paints over the keyboard and you have no idea where anything is because it's not a normal layout for a keyboard. If it was QWERTY and then a numpad, some people would be able to use it blindly, or pull up their phone to check positions.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Like I said above, it's probably an idea that an alphabetical layout is somewhat familiar to everyone, but a QWERTY layout is only familiar to people who type. Not that long ago, fewer people than you might expect were familiar with QWERTY keyboards (no smartphones before about 2006). These machines are also for use by people who have never used a computer or smartphone, and, incurring the elderly people that councils have to consider, they exist. I'm guessing at their reasoning, but "everyone knows QWERTY" is probably not as true as you think, or if it is, it hasn't been so for that long. It could also be an international company that doesn't want to have SKUs for the keypad for every region (eg France uses AZERTY).
- chaosite 4y ago
  Fine, not everyone knows QWERTY. It's not intuitive, people aren't born with an innate knowledge of a keyboard layout. But you also can't name a layout which is more familiar than QWERTY, and its regional variants (including AZERTY). If you don't want to localize, US QWERTY would probably be the single most familiar layout globally.
- noirbot 4y ago
  I'm not sure this is true though. As said elsewhere in these comments, the full-keyboard version of this machine is fairly new (last 5-10 years to my memory). It used to just be an up/down arrow for adjusting how much time you wanted, and then it printed a sticker to add to your car window. The new version with the full keyboard is so they can just drive by and scan your license plate and ticket you that way if you overstay your payment. It's not like these are machines from the 90s when not that many people had computers. The addition of the keyboard is specifically something that was done because wireless internet and computer vision improved enough to do away wit the older version. I'd be earnestly curious what percentage of the population that lives in an area with controlled parking like this doesn't interact with a keyboard at least weekly. Even my 99 year old grandfather was sending emails from his computer a decade ago from his farm in the rural US. The target demographic here is A. People who own cars B. who need to park them in urban areas with street parking. Both of those are, for the last decade, likely to own a smartphone, I'd imagine.