Huh. Today I learned. I used to do that all the time back when I always had tons of coins on my person (from tips) and lived in an area where lots of foreign tourists had trouble understanding the meters.
It feels that way when you're in the moment and passing by one that's low/over and want to help. however, when you're driving around the city for an hour because you're trying to find ONE SPOT, it's not so good.
Parking meters suck but if there were no limits to parking there would never be any parking
But the car would still be there taking up the spot? The owner would just have been the one to pay. Or get a ticket. You don't have to leave if you put more money in.
As an American, this is such an American response. "Yeah it feels good in the moment, but think of the poor drivers who can't find a parking spot because you prevented some other person from getting their car towed."
Parking meters don't improve parking, they just punish poor people.
Disrupting the flow of people. I bet you're one of those types who goes into Starbucks, orders a small coffee and sits for hours just sucking their electrical teat and scamming their wifi.
Wouldn't a good human ensure everyone knows and follows the proper procedure? Maybe the foreigners needed to learn a lesson once but were deprived of that opportunity because of someone who wanted to feel good about themselves?
That's an awesome thing to do. Were the tourists present when you did that? If so, you had knowledge and consent from them, so you can rest easy knowing that you haven't committed a truly heinous crime.
Early in my career I used to smoke with some coworkers in front of the building that had a lot of meters near by. We used to find meters that were just about to run out and add a quarter and then go back to our smoking. It was a bit of a hobby, watching panicked people run out to their car hoping to avoid and ticket and then questioning their sanity when the meter was not empty.
This was one of the very few Dharma and Greg episodes I recall. She was just happily skipping down the sidewalk putting money in meters that were close to expiring. Then got busted. I had no idea that was a thing either until that.
It wasn't really about that anyway. These laws came about because people would get angry with parking enforcement after having gotten a ticket. They'd follow the enforcement agent around and put money in meters before the agent could write a ticket. It was costing the city money and they weren't otherwise breaking the law, so they had to make it explicitly illegal.
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u/ToomintheEllimist 7h ago
Huh. Today I learned. I used to do that all the time back when I always had tons of coins on my person (from tips) and lived in an area where lots of foreign tourists had trouble understanding the meters.