5 ms·

The goal of fines is meant to be to discourage specific problematic behaviours, like parking where it would cause problems for the fire department. When the go

by mabbo 3y ago

The goal of fines is meant to be to discourage specific problematic behaviours, like parking where it would cause problems for the fire department. When the goal becomes to cause the behaviour more often so that your can collect more fines, the entire system is just fundamentally broken. A large portion of the money collected should go to a department whose goal is to find further ways to discourage the problematic behaviour. Paint the curb bright red, for starters.

bombcar 3y ago
This is why the basic solution of calling the firefighters out to break the windows of the vehicle and run a hose through it is more an actual solution. Apparently it worked to get the Soviet diplomats to stop parking in front of hydrants.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I've got a feeling that there are so many false fire alarms that fire crews probably don't bother getting out the hoses until they see smoke at least. Remember the truck has a couple of minutes supply of water onboard, so hooking up to a hydrant immediately isn't the top priority anyways.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    You don't need to get out the hoses to break the windows. You just need to have the FD drive by and break the windows, then receive an unexpected higher priority call so they just jump back on the truck and drive away to that next call. Hell, you don't even need to send a truck. Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants.
    - jstarfish 3y ago
      > Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants. Fun. Then we get kids putting a cardboard box over the hydrant and playing "what box?" after smashing your windows. Varies by municipality: when parking anywhere, look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road. There's usually one or two per street. They denote where the fire hydrants are so the FD can easily find them when cars block curbside visibility. You can use the same feature to avoid hidden hydrants yourself.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        >look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road. In marching band, we referred to those as Smurf Shit, and the drum captain would whack the snare a particular way to let the rest of the band know of its presence so nobody tripped over it
- Phlarp 3y ago
  Not sure I'm in love with the idea of emergency services spending a bunch of time breaking windows and putting hoses through a car. Although not in love with fire hydrants as a revenue source either.
- kube-system 3y ago
  Until a panel van parks there.
  - giaour 3y ago
    You can cut a hole through a panel van with a standard tool in the firefighter arsenal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_rescue_tool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_rescue_tool
    - kube-system 3y ago
      That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be easy to toss a hose through it without delaying the fire response. https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/work-van-full-debris-its-way-to-recycling-white-133762281.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/work-van-full-debris-its-way... Hydraulic cutters are slow AF and they're not going to remove bulk material that is in the way.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The whole point is it's done when it's NOT actually an emergency; they just do it because it's parked wrong.
        kube-system 3y ago
        I'd prefer my local fire department keep their staff and equipment available for emergency use, not for parking enforcement.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tverbeure 3y ago
Check out this follow-up post: https://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/87573867759/success-how-nyc-open-data-and-reddit-just-saved-new https://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/87573867759/success-how-nyc... It shows how the city updated the paint marks for 2 of those illegal parking spots after they were made aware of the issue.
- oskarkk 3y ago
  And sadly since updating the marks, on 3 out of 5 street view photos of one of these places someone has parked there anyway: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7184242,-73.9928144,3a,75y,310.76h,69.66t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suYHkUJrZ79IZDfkyrA3DvA!2e0!5s20220701T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7184242,-73.9928144,3a,75y,3...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ryandrake 3y ago
> A large portion of the money collected should go to a department whose goal is to find further ways to discourage the problematic behaviour. Paint the curb bright red, for starters. That would still not really align incentives. If a particular action (parking next to a fire hydrant) produced revenue for that department, they will be financially incentivized to encourage more of that action, not less of it. If the government somehow lost money rather than gained money when someone did something naughty, then maybe they'd work to try to reduce that naughty behavior.
- radlad 3y ago
  In [redacted], the city recently contracted Municipal Parking Services, a Minnesota-based company, to install a new parking system which reads plates and automatically issues fines after a 5-minute grace period (mailed to your house.) The system is a bit confusing and unexpected to visitors. A DDA study determined that 43% of visitors were being fined. As a result of getting ticketed, I've heard many people in say they won't visit [redacted] anymore. So I guess that's one way to discentivize yourself.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Alternatively, such a department might not be funded by the fines, but merely funded at a flat rate, like an auditor.
nostromo 3y ago
The solution is to never have the agency giving the fine benefiting from the fine. The best solution (and, no, I'm not joking) would be destroy all funds raised in government fines, nationwide. Send the fines directly to the Federal Reserve balance sheet. Fines generally suck anyway, because they allow people that can easily afford them to break the law.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Sure, as soon as you have a viable method for funding the services that rely on that revenue.
  - Symmetry 3y ago
    I'd hope that services are mostly paid for by taxes or user fees rather than fines.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      No, budgets get rearranged to put the money towards other items when certain items can pay for themselves like this. There's only so much money raised via taxes. Income via fines is an unlimited well to be tapped by those with the creativity to find them
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Replace all fines (and most jail time) with community service, defined as something like "hours signed off by the director of any 501(c)(3)." Cut government programs that are now unnecessary because of all the community service. The supply of community service hours is decentralized and 501(c)(3) organizations have limited input into law enforcement, so the government has less incentive to increase non-compliance to increase citations. Also fun to see the entire C-suite of a company get 1000 hours of community service each instead of a fine paid by shareholders whose only mistake was hiring them.
    - idiotsecant 3y ago
badcc 3y ago
Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
MisterTea 3y ago
> A large portion of the money collected should go to a department whose goal is to find further ways to discourage the problematic behaviour. Then how will they be able to milk the citizens for millions a year? It's in their best interest to keep everything as confusing as possible so they can trap as many people as they can.
fsckboy 3y ago
> The goal of fines is to discourage ... When the goal becomes ... collect more fines,... the entire system is just fundamentally broken. Your assumption is that fines discourage. If fines discourage, and the goal is to maximize discouragement, that will occur when fines are maximized. ...unless you think the fines are so large that we've gone past the peak discouragement point, where people are so scared of the fines that they no longer maximize their misbehavior. In this case, if we decrease fines, revenue to the city will increase! the Laffer parking curve! The beatings will stop when morale improves.

by mabbo 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

This is why the basic solution of calling the firefighters out to break the windows of the vehicle and run a hose through it is more an actual solution. Apparently it worked to get the Soviet diplomats to stop parking in front of hydrants.

londons_explore 3y ago
I've got a feeling that there are so many false fire alarms that fire crews probably don't bother getting out the hoses until they see smoke at least. Remember the truck has a couple of minutes supply of water onboard, so hooking up to a hydrant immediately isn't the top priority anyways.
- dylan604 3y ago
  You don't need to get out the hoses to break the windows. You just need to have the FD drive by and break the windows, then receive an unexpected higher priority call so they just jump back on the truck and drive away to that next call. Hell, you don't even need to send a truck. Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants. Fun. Then we get kids putting a cardboard box over the hydrant and playing "what box?" after smashing your windows. Varies by municipality: when parking anywhere, look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road. There's usually one or two per street. They denote where the fire hydrants are so the FD can easily find them when cars block curbside visibility. You can use the same feature to avoid hidden hydrants yourself.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      >look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road. In marching band, we referred to those as Smurf Shit, and the drum captain would whack the snare a particular way to let the rest of the band know of its presence so nobody tripped over it
Phlarp 3y ago
Not sure I'm in love with the idea of emergency services spending a bunch of time breaking windows and putting hoses through a car. Although not in love with fire hydrants as a revenue source either.
kube-system 3y ago
Until a panel van parks there.
- giaour 3y ago
  You can cut a hole through a panel van with a standard tool in the firefighter arsenal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_rescue_tool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_rescue_tool
  - kube-system 3y ago
    That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be easy to toss a hose through it without delaying the fire response. https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/work-van-full-debris-its-way-to-recycling-white-133762281.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/work-van-full-debris-its-way... Hydraulic cutters are slow AF and they're not going to remove bulk material that is in the way.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The whole point is it's done when it's NOT actually an emergency; they just do it because it's parked wrong.
      - kube-system 3y ago
        I'd prefer my local fire department keep their staff and equipment available for emergency use, not for parking enforcement.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tverbeure 3y ago

Check out this follow-up post: https://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/87573867759/success-how-nyc-open-data-and-reddit-just-saved-new https://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/87573867759/success-how-nyc... It shows how the city updated the paint marks for 2 of those illegal parking spots after they were made aware of the issue.

oskarkk 3y ago
And sadly since updating the marks, on 3 out of 5 street view photos of one of these places someone has parked there anyway: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7184242,-73.9928144,3a,75y,310.76h,69.66t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suYHkUJrZ79IZDfkyrA3DvA!2e0!5s20220701T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7184242,-73.9928144,3a,75y,3...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ryandrake 3y ago

> A large portion of the money collected should go to a department whose goal is to find further ways to discourage the problematic behaviour. Paint the curb bright red, for starters. That would still not really align incentives. If a particular action (parking next to a fire hydrant) produced revenue for that department, they will be financially incentivized to encourage more of that action, not less of it. If the government somehow lost money rather than gained money when someone did something naughty, then maybe they'd work to try to reduce that naughty behavior.

radlad 3y ago
In [redacted], the city recently contracted Municipal Parking Services, a Minnesota-based company, to install a new parking system which reads plates and automatically issues fines after a 5-minute grace period (mailed to your house.) The system is a bit confusing and unexpected to visitors. A DDA study determined that 43% of visitors were being fined. As a result of getting ticketed, I've heard many people in say they won't visit [redacted] anymore. So I guess that's one way to discentivize yourself.
unethical_ban 3y ago
Alternatively, such a department might not be funded by the fines, but merely funded at a flat rate, like an auditor.

nostromo 3y ago

The solution is to never have the agency giving the fine benefiting from the fine. The best solution (and, no, I'm not joking) would be destroy all funds raised in government fines, nationwide. Send the fines directly to the Federal Reserve balance sheet. Fines generally suck anyway, because they allow people that can easily afford them to break the law.

idiotsecant 3y ago
Sure, as soon as you have a viable method for funding the services that rely on that revenue.
- Symmetry 3y ago
  I'd hope that services are mostly paid for by taxes or user fees rather than fines.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    No, budgets get rearranged to put the money towards other items when certain items can pay for themselves like this. There's only so much money raised via taxes. Income via fines is an unlimited well to be tapped by those with the creativity to find them
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Replace all fines (and most jail time) with community service, defined as something like "hours signed off by the director of any 501(c)(3)." Cut government programs that are now unnecessary because of all the community service. The supply of community service hours is decentralized and 501(c)(3) organizations have limited input into law enforcement, so the government has less incentive to increase non-compliance to increase citations. Also fun to see the entire C-suite of a company get 1000 hours of community service each instead of a fine paid by shareholders whose only mistake was hiring them.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago

badcc 3y ago

Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

MisterTea 3y ago

> A large portion of the money collected should go to a department whose goal is to find further ways to discourage the problematic behaviour. Then how will they be able to milk the citizens for millions a year? It's in their best interest to keep everything as confusing as possible so they can trap as many people as they can.

fsckboy 3y ago

> The goal of fines is to discourage ... When the goal becomes ... collect more fines,... the entire system is just fundamentally broken. Your assumption is that fines discourage. If fines discourage, and the goal is to maximize discouragement, that will occur when fines are maximized. ...unless you think the fines are so large that we've gone past the peak discouragement point, where people are so scared of the fines that they no longer maximize their misbehavior. In this case, if we decrease fines, revenue to the city will increase! the Laffer parking curve! The beatings will stop when morale improves.