Hacker News Reader

Comment by avhon1 | Hacker News Reader

> Treat fines like payments > e.g. park illegally and let yourself think of the (expected value of the) fine as a parking fee

This doesn't seem like something you're "allowed" to do. Maybe more like "able" to do, in the sense that you can violate other laws, and maybe the payoff or the risk/reward ratio makes it worthwhile. My understanding of "allow" is that it means people will accept you doing something. The existence and enforcement (like fines) of rules that prohibit doing things seems exclusive to something being "allowed".

View on HN

In this context "you're allowed to" means "this didn't necessarily occur to you as part of the solution space, but it is."

For example many programmers have it in their heads that their only two activities are writing production code and staring at/thinking about log output. Sometimes it's helpful to be reminded that you are "allowed" to write scripts to analyze log output. No one is worried that they will be punished for this. But a surprising number of programmers will stare down a programming-shaped problem and fail to put two and two together.

I did something like that in college a couple times. $10 fine for parking in the wrong spot on campus, only risk was being unable to register for a parking permit the next term if you didn't pay it off. It (on the few occasions I did it) beat the alternative of a 20- to 30-minute walk due to conflicting schedules (like having a medical appointment that got me to campus after most others had arrived). They'd only ticket once as long as the car was only there for 2-3 hours. Perfect for a class, drive to lunch, park properly after. Certainly not something to do frequently, and it wasn't illegal parking, it was just not permitted parking.

It's insane that any college would be set up in such a fashion that you'd have to drive to class. (Unless I'm misunderstanding this, and you're talking about driving to school?)

I would assume they lived off campus...

I lived at home because it was cheaper (free other than yard work, housework, and doing my own laundry), campus was 3 or 4 miles away depending on which end I needed (and roads were just dangerous enough I wasn't going to cycle, tried it, didn't like the assholes throwing shit at me). Most students lived on campus, but many (including locals like me) lived off campus.

But even those who lived on campus, the furthest dorms were where I'd have had to park on those mentioned days. I did that sometimes, but it really was a 20- to 30-minute walk depending on where I was going on campus because they decided a mile long parking lot made more sense than a parking deck (later built, after I graduated).

Also it had a bus service, but it really only covered connecting the business school, psychology school, and main campus. The massive parking lot was not covered by the bus service, which didn't make sense.

ahh that makes more sense. Thought you were saying you were driving from one class to another.

That's not really that uncommon either. Lots of colleges have satelite campuses in addition to (now-landlocked) main campuses.

Is it a common experience for cyclists to have shit thrown at them?

It wasn't literal shit, fortunately, but it was cans. This was in south Georgia and yes. Also my experience in middle Georgia. Assholes in trucks being assholes in trucks. I'm in Colorado now and I've seen a lot of cyclists so I'm planning to test out the roads near my home in the spring. From talking to coworkers the attitude is better here.

Strangely I found when owning a smallish truck in college, strangers would apparently decide to use my truck bed as a trash bin for their various drink cans. Very strange and annoying. Random beer and energy drink cans would fly out on the highway. People just have too many cans, I guess. Maybe it's just us southern states.

If the driver in front of you loses a piece of trash from their truck bed, consider it may not even be theirs!

Well, this was obviously thrown, and on multiple occasions. I will agree that trucks get used as trash bins too much by strangers, and sometimes debris flies out. But that wasn't my experience on these occasions.

> only risk was being unable to register for a parking permit the next term if you didn't pay it off

That surprises me. I would have thought that most colleges had a rule saying that they wouldn't give you a diploma until you had settled all arrears.

Well, that may also have been a penalty but it wasn't one I faced. The only one I knew was the risk of being unable to register your vehicle in the next term.

But some people just never registered their vehicles, which was also an option. There was no electronic tool for the ticket givers (fellow students working for the school) to look up a vehicle. So instead of towing every violation, they just gave up. I knew a guy who had accrued a couple hundred tickets by the time he graduated, car wasn't under his name (his parents) so no penalties for him (from the school) if they'd tried to find the owner, and the school never pursued his parents for it.

It was not an effective system. The only people who actually had to pay for a parking permit were those who lived on campus because their cars would be there overnight, that's when cars would be towed if they lacked a current parking sticker. (I worked or studied on campus until 10 or 11pm most nights so I was paying for a permit.)

This is actually a well known thing in psychology.

Instituting a fine can actually cause the undesired behavior to increase.

E.g. daycare adds a late pickup fee, then it becomes, "Oh well, I can <get thing done> for $20" instead of something the parent feels really guilty about, thus actually INCREASING late pickups.

I worked at the college radio station located in the on campus student center, which also had a hotel attached. It was, like all campuses, annoying to find parking / work out transportation.

Then one day I just needed to run get something, so I parked in the hotel loading zone. I ran into someone and chatted for about close to an hour and then, remembering where I parked, freaked out and ran outside.

Car was still there, no problems.

In true hacker fashion, I went and sat in the car and waited to see when someone would a campus metermaid would come along.

They never did!

And so for the next 2 years I parked there every day.

In the end I did receive 6 $25 tickets and, ingloriously, I was towed once which cost me $250.

Compared to a parking pass it was an absolute steal, and in true "things you're allowed to do" form, it helped me realize the risks of transgression are lower than you think.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com