I parked the Honda at a place yesterday that uses one of those machines where you buy a ticket and put it in your dashboard to show that you’ve paid for parking. When I got back to the car, I had a parking ticket. I was baffled, but I thought I had them dead to rights. The ticket was issued at more than half an hour before the expiration of my parking. All I’d have to do was show them and I would be vindicated.
But a closer look showed me that the ticket was not really a parking violation. It was a $50 ticket for not having a valid state inspection. It said that the inspection expired in January. And indeed, it had.
The only place we ever drive the Honda is to and from my office. The car sits in the parking lot of our house or my office. Somehow, in the busyness at the end of the year, we overlooked the inspection. Neither of us remembered and neither of us thought about it. It hadn’t occurred to us since. Until yesterday.
So the ticket is legitimate. Except…
…Maybe it’s just me, but I find it rather insidious that parking enforcement would issue a ticket to a validly parked car for an expired state inspection. It doesn’t seem to be a matter of public safety to me, it seems more like gouging for cash. A kinder, gentler parking enforcement might have issued a warning.
In any event, it is the second ticket I’ve ever received in my life, both of them issued by parking enforcement, although clearly this one wasn’t for parking.
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