Transportation

Local cops must be bored

I always find parking tickets to be funny, especially when they are so ridiculously outrageous or seemingly without cause. I find them so funny, infact, that I use to park in the most assholish ways just to see if anyone would write me a ticket. Sometime they did, sometime they didn’t. Either way, it was worth the cost of the ticket for the picture and story I received as a result of it.

Take for instance, this specimen I received at 3:52 this morning, parked in my own driveway:

According to this ticket, written at 3:52 in the morning, my car was parked “On the Sidewalk”. How’s that even possible? What cops are cruising around at 4AM looking for cars in driveways to ticket? Who would my car be blocking even if there was someone out there who needed to get around it? In my own driveway, at my home, what damage was being done?

Let’s put it in perspective. I have 2 Mazda Miatas. I have a driveway just long enough for 2 Mazda Miatas. How much could it possibly be hanging over the edge? It’s been parked there for over a month, in that same spot, without a problem. Why is this suddenly an issue? After I mulled over the ticket, I did a quick examination of the supposed cause.

The Miata in question was parked in the driveway, pulled to about where it always was. How much of it was hanging over the sidewalk? 2 inches! There was 2 inches of the bumper hanging over the sidewalk. Anyone walking down the sidewalk wouldn’t even have to make adjustments in their stride. Why ticket me for this? I’m guessing it has something to do with the rise in tickets being issued all over the U.S. to combat falling city budgets.

Whatever the cause, I’m going to pay it. The city obviously needs the money more than I do.

Related posts:

1. Tampa Bay Miata Owners… meet with local Miata enthusiasts every wednesday