Woman Jailed for Not Paying $30,000 in Parking Tickets

While I dislike the invention, the "boot" does put an end to this sort of behavior long before one racks up 700 parking tickets. Here in Denver, cars get booted usually on the 3rd offence.

Meter maids in Denver get dinged if they issue less than 79 tickets in an 8 hour shift (for some shifts): http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/30/city-no-bu...

My favorite part of the story was "However, despite over 700 attempts by local authorities to contact her and obtain payment during that time, she failed to meet any of the charges." Here in the United States they put on tire locks and eventually tow the car, is that not the case in Austria? They said the civil servant racked these up over the course of two years.

While I fail to see the HN angle in the story, I find it funny and pretty disturbing that judges (ab)use a loophole in the legal system to sentence someone to jail for 500 days for an offense with a stated maximum of 42 days.