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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

going back to pre-smartphone but still true, in the US at least, it is generally illegal to park at a broken meter and you can get a ticket -- because otherwise there would be incentive to break the meter so you could park there for free.

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> because otherwise there would be incentive to break the meter so you could park there for free

Never in my life would I have thought of that.

You must not be a security researcher or QA tester :)

This is only an issue because the US somehow became allergic to enforcing vandalism and property crime laws aggressively

Unfortunately, people have bought into the idea that enforcing laws which are disproportionately broken by the socially disadvantaged is tantamount to oppression. Vandalism and property crime tends to be committed by the poor underclass, often by racial minorities to boot. So people don't want to enforce laws against those people, whose lives are already kinda crap, because they think it's just oppressing them further. Unfortunately, while this thinking is well-intentioned it has really cost society in general dearly.

I've bought into that idea (with caveats case by case, i.e. evaluated by judges with discretion), but it only works when those kind of crimes are feeders into social support agencies. Without effective social support to either rehabilitate behaviour or remove the need for that behaviour you're either going to need to remove the offenders or accept repeated crimes.

The cheapest cost per prisoner in the US is $23,000 per year (Arkansas with other states costing more). That's a lot of support you can give a person before it makes sense to send them to prison, especially if the prison doesn't actively work towards rehabilitation.

Problem is MVP prisons for your criminal population is viewed as needed while spending the money more effectively doesn't really have political consensus.

Uh... I don't think so. These laws have been in place for decades, and are a way of preventing vandalism to property meters.

We don't yet have a surveillance state capable of observing every time someone puts gum in a parking meter while pretending to pay it, so they can park for free, it's not that we are "allergic" to enforcing this so choose to prevent parking at vandalized meters instead, it's that it's not realistic to catch that. Although I guess we're getting closer to that surveillance state now, but certainly weren't when these laws were first implemented, their motivation was that it was not feasible to catch most people vandalizing parking meters, instead the reward for doing so had to be removed (which honestly seems a lot more effective anyway??)

You can park at a broken meter in SF:

https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/drive-park/parking-mete...

Are you extrapolating experiences from a small area or at of municipalities, because I've never been ticketed for parking at a broken meter in the US.

I haven't been ticketed for parking at an expired meter for years either! Laws may have varying levels of enforcement, is one thing.

Google AI agrees that it's generally illegal. I can't look up every single municipality of course, but here's a few. It certainly may not be universal, but it is not unusual, I don't have figures on how popular it is, maybe not as popular as I thought, but it's not at all unusual!

Rockville MD: "If a parking meter is not registering time with the insertion of coins, debit/credit card or ParkMobile, you must either park elsewhere or pay with another payment method available" https://www.rockvillemd.gov/274/Public-Parking

Chicago: "Overstuffed meters wouldn't accept quarters, leading to broken meters and tickets for the parkers who tried to use them." https://www.governing.com/archive/chicago-parking-meters.htm...

Bellingham Washington: "City code prohibits parking in a space if the meter is broken." https://cob.org/wp-content/uploads/parking-meter-info.pdf

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