Europe
In Europe, parking tickets are also heavily used. In Sweden, parking violations on street are considered traffic crimes with a fine. If the fine is not objected or paid within a specified time, the Swedish Enforcement Administration will claim money from bank accounts or other assets, relatively fast. The owner will be noted as a bad payer, and will not get a loan or a new rental apartment etc. for three years. A parking violation on a parking place (not on the street) is considered a break of contract which results in a penalty fee with different rules. According to statistics from Stockholm the cars with the highest number of parking violations (weighted for number of cars) are Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Lexus. Mercedes owners were the worst for parking in handicap spaces. Professor Gunnar Aronsson at the department for psychology at Stockholm university believes this is due to the owners being well-off and thinking that their time is more important. According to Jan Prestberg at the traffic office in Stockholm the fines are low enough to be ignored by richer people. It is often hard to find parking spots in big cities. After wheel-locks were introduced in London, the prices for rented parking spots went up considerably.
Foreign-registered vehicles in Europe in reality can not be fined. This is partly because it is too much work to find the owner in a foreign country, but mainly because it is not legally possible to claim money from a foreign resident person if they don't pay voluntarily. The European Union is introducing legislation into all member countries to collect fines across borders. In some cities, like London, this has been solved by locking one wheel of a falsely parked vehicle. The driver has to pay to be able to drive.
Read more about this topic: Parking Violation
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“Of one thing I can assure you with comparative certainty, whoever wins, Europe will be economically ruined. This war is America’s great opportunity.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.... [The Nazis] have made it clear that not only do they intend to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Is not our role to stand for the one thing which means our own salvation here but with which it will also be possible to save the world, and with which Europe will be able to save itself, namely the preservation of the white man and his state?”
—Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966)