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Driver picks up 186 parking fines
2015/10/24 4:26:44

  THE winner of this year’s “Most Parking Violations” award was identified yesterday as the owner of a Suzhou-registered license plate.

  At a low-key ceremony, Shanghai police said the plate made it into the ticket book no less than 186 times in the year through October 22, a period of 295 days. That equates to one offense every 40 hours.

  The plate’s owner was not named, though the license number and those of 19 other nominations for the less-than-prestigious gong, were made public. Between them, the 20 worst offenders racked up 2,363 violations in the period — eight per day, or one every three hours — and cumulative fines of 470,000 yuan (US$74,000), police said.

  The total number of parking tickets issued in the city in the near-10 months rose 16 percent from last year to more than 3 million, or 10,000-plus per day, they said.

  The number of violators identified with the help of new technology, such as surveillance cameras, almost trebled in the period, they said, without providing absolute figures.

  Talking on the sidelines of yesterday’s event, police officer Liu Yang said that while he tries to be reasonable with errant parkers, there are times when he has no choice but to hand them a ticket.

  “The other day, I had to give a ticket to a woman who was parked in front of the gates to a primary school,” he said.

  “I asked her several times to move as she was causing a huge jam. But she refused, saying she had to wait until her child had finished his breakfast.

  “I always allow people a bit of time to drop off their children, but that was going too far,” he said.

  In a separate incident, reported by Xinmin Evening News, an official with Jing’an traffic police was quoted as saying that the real problem is the lack of parking spaces in the city, especially at places like hospitals.

  “When I asked a man sitting in a parked car outside Huashan Hospital to move along, he said: ‘Give me a ticket if you like, but I’m not going anywhere,’” the official said.

  “Many drivers regard getting a ticket as an occupational hazard, as they feel they have no choice but to break the law,” he said.

  Parking tickets issued in Shanghai come with a fine of 200 yuan.