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Rome Police Use Twitter To Battle Illegal Parking
cartechboy writes "Illegal parking has always been a major problem in Rome. More than half of Rome's 2.7 million residents use private vehicles, and the ancient city has a staggering ratio of 70 cars per 100 residents. So many residents park, uh, creatively. But now authorities think they've found a way to fight bad parking using social media. Basically, they've asked residents to post photos of bad parking jobs to Twitter. In December, the Italian cops began encouraging smart phone users to snap pics of illegally parked cars and tweet those photos to the department's Twitter account. The new system, which was created by Raffaele Clemente, Rome's chief of traffic police, seems to be working. In the first 30 days, police received more than 1,000 complaints tweeted to their account; (one example is here). Officials were able to respond to around 740 and hand out citations."
Hey, 'your car is being towed' is trending!
#StupidShitPeopleThinkIsSmart #FAIL
What irks me is the lack of town planning for cars in European cities then the incompetent authorities act like it is all the citizens fault. I get that they have ancient medieval town centers that are almost impossible to modify - but that is no excuse for not providing adequate amounts of free to almost free just out-of-town parking and efficient cheap public transport into the centers (efficient does not mean it has to be profitable in the direct sense).
Singapore for example with so little space has pioneered high rise cheap parking for all out in the suburbs and electronic pay to enter town centers that really increased the quality of life in the inner city, or so I hear.
Don't get me started on the last century traffic lights on timers and no trigger sensors of any kind in sight even at the pedestrian crossings. Christmas lights I like to call them. The amount of petrol they must waste stopping scores of cars for no reason must be mind-boggling.
Since when is a license plate private? It's as public as the number on your house, and Google Street already put those online.
At risk of being put online? Don't people risk exposing their license plates every time they back out of the garage?
I think the real concern is, "This just puts millions of illegally parking individuals at risk of being publicly shamed."
The best protection for any one concerned their license plate may end up online seems pretty simple and obvious: think ahead, be considerate, and don't park like an asshole.
fnord.
To put those numbers into perspective: In 2011, 2.5 million traffic citations were filed in Rome, about 45% of those have been paid. In 2012 the number of citations dropped to 2.2 million of which 39% have been paid. (source)
A picture is often more useful than a verbal complaint when the police are evaluating whether a given parking situation actually is a violation, and the exact location where it occurred.
And for citizens armed with a cellphone camera and Twitter, it's faster for them to post a pic than to sit on the non-emergency line for several minutes, first on hold for 5 minutes, then some more minutes to describe the vehicle and the location.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I don't find that staggering. What I do find staggering is that the seems to be a ratio of about 70 cars per every parking space. Rome is a place where triple parking is pretty much routine.
Rome has enormous public transportation problems for 2 main reasons :
- one is that its surface public bus fleet is seriously small for a city that in extension is second to London.
- building a subway network is very difficult not for engineering problems but for historical problems. The Law makes it impossible to continue an engineering project should you end up coming into contact with ancient Roman ruins. And digging in Rome is a guarantee that you'll end up upon some ancient Roman ruins. So each time you want to build a garage, a new subway station it is a roll of dice. And when the works stops you can't destroy the ruins to continue the engineering project, you are not allow to move the ruins etc... So it all ends un in a standstill for years or decades to come. This is one aspect where fanatical respect for historical ruins is seriously harming any evolution of Rome as a city. Sometimes you need to let go of ancient things to build for the present. And that's not the case in Italy. The past takes precedence over the present. And so you end up in these absurd situations where Roman ruins end up having more "rights" than modern roman citizens do. With the consequence that living in Rome is hell. I can guarentee that no Roman likes living in Rome. Tourists yeah but they only stay 1-2 weeks. Day to day life in Rome is hell. Think Atlanta snow congested caos every single day of the year. It would drive crazy anybody.
Just open up for private companies to tow illegally parked cars and make money (huge fees) from the towing and storage of the vehicles. With hundreds of such companies hunting for illegally parked cars and thus money, the streets will be clear in no time, and all the parking assholes will have learned an expensive lesson. To prevent abuse all towing must be documented using photos showing the parking offense, a copy of which are sent to the offender.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Why not just use the non-emergency number that most police agencies have to report a parking infraction?
Because this provides photographic proof of the bad parking before they send out a meter maid.
This just puts millions of license plates at risk of being put online for the purpose of reporting a person's supposedly bad parking.
Never quite understood this whole 'privacy of license plates' thing. If I look out the window right now I can see a dozen+ license plates. If I went for a walk I'd see hundreds. How is it private if there are two of them on every car for everyone to see?
Rome existed for thousands of years before the car was invented. Sorry that they didn't think of savings space for car parks during the bronze age.
The new system, which was created by Raffaele Clemente, Rome's chief of traffic police, seems to be working.
I would argue if it were working then they wouldn't be getting many such tweets. Perfaps you forget aim is not to give more itations but fewer illegal parkings. All we can say is it might work.
America is litigation land, and they just don't want the hassle of any frivolous lawsuits.
Never quite understood this whole 'privacy of license plates' thing. If I look out the window right now I can see a dozen+ license plates. If I went for a walk I'd see hundreds. How is it private if there are two of them on every car for everyone to see?
The word privacy has multiple definitions. In this case, the apropriate definition is ephemeral. You looking at a license plate informs one person, you, about the time and location of that plate. You posting a picture of that online creates a perment record that potentially millions of people can access.
It is the same thing as using a debit card and the clerk looking at the card number versus the POS computer making a permanent record of the card number. The first is a very small risk, the second is essentially an unbounded risk as customers of Target, Neiman-Marcus and Michaels have come to find out.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
How do you get from those deep subway tunnels to the surface? Also, since Rome is fairly near sea level, and near the sea, those deep subway tunnels are also going to be underwater. This makes things much more expensive.
The solution in Roman times was, IIRC, to ban vehicles on the streets during daylight hours. I don't really think you need to ban bicycles, but Rome *is* the city on seven hills, so I doubt that bicycle use will be a popular as in flatter cities.
Perhaps an elevated railway could be made to work. You would need to design it with light vehicles, so that you would have considerable latitude as to where you placed the support pylons.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So wait - you think reporting a crime to the police so they can investigate it is "tattling"? What are you? 8 years old?
You see some thugs mugging an old woman - move along, none of your business. You see someone breaking into your neighbor's house - leave it alone, I'm sure they value their privacy.
I simply can't understand the mentality that says if you see someone doing something wrong you just let them carry on. Baffling.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
To make the people feel like their Police/Government is listening to them and will actually do something perhaps?
But yes, you can stumble 10 feet in almost any direction and find vehicles parked and abandoned all over Rome. What's even funnier are the motor scooters that you know have been locked to that lamentable light pole or bike rack for months and are damaged or covered in 2 inches of dust. It's like the Owner forgot all about them.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"