I was reminded of this when I read a “Shower thoughts” post about clocks.
Where I live, there usually is free parking outside of stores and malls, but limited to a short time, such as 15 minutes or a couple of hours. People have parking discs that they rotate to show when they arrived, and put the discs up visible behind their windshields in their cars.
I have an automatic parking timer displayed in my windshield, that shows the time when I parked rounded up to the nearest half/whole hour. It’s a ”set and forget” thing, which auto adjusts to daylight savings. However, it speeds up 1 - 2 minutes a week, which I didn’t see as it rounds up the time, but I found out after a few months.
Once after parking, I took a quick dash into the store, took maybe 5 minutes. When I got back I had received a fine for the equivalent of 80 € for ”parking for 23 hours in a 2 hour spot”. They apparently don’t have to wait five minutes to write out the ticket if the parking timer was so off.
I didn’t contest the ticket, I considered it a learning experience and a reminder to never blindly trust technology.
Of course it’s primarily the drivers job to make sure they don’t park illegally, the enforcement is there only to catch those who do not. Setting a disk that states when you got there is not a big requirement but does help make sure some drivers don’t overstay on limited parking space.
Driving (or owning) a car is not a common right, it’s a proviledge to be earned by being able to show you are responsible enough to steer a vehicle that can very easily end up maiming or killing someone. This is why you need a license to drive and why it is ok to give added responsibilities, like using a parking disc if needed. And if you fail to fill these responsibilities, you should be fined or in more serious cases lose your license.