Parking tickets

Today I thought I should pay the parking ticket I got last month. Turns out the fee had been doubled because I had not paid within 2 weeks. Also turns out that a ticket I got in April, and thought I had paid, had instead been sent to the police. I owed 3749 ISK for I don't even know what. I doubt they even had proof of the infraction.

This would not happen in the U.S. My parking tickets would not get a spot on the legal docket unless things were really out of hand. Perhaps you've seen the joke in some American movies where a person takes the parking ticket off their windshield, opens the glove compartment, and shoves the ticket in with dozens of other (presumably unpaid) parking tickets? This is basically true. It takes a lot in the U.S. for a person to get in any sort of legal problem because of a parking ticket. Years and years of unpaid tickets can accumulate before a state will take away your driver's license or boot your car. I have paid tickets 3 months after the fact, 6 months after the fact, and though there might be a late fee, it is not double. And I have never heard of a case going to the police for just 1 unpaid ticket!

The American reasoning is the quicker the fees go up, the quicker the penalties get in place, the less likely a person is to actually pay the parking ticket. Too severe of a penalty for a minor infraction (not putting a dollar in a little machine is now costing $300 dollars!) goes against people's basic sense of justice, and therefore leads to an uncooperative citizenry.

In the case of parking tickets, I really would say America is the land of the free.

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