More importantly: parking illegally often endangers or harms other people (e.g. by blocking fire hydrants that might be needed in an emergency, or by impeding the flow of traffic).
Considering that, then the fine should be the monetary equivalent to the worst thing that happened or could happen because of the infraction.
Parking illegally in a specific spot could result in the death of 8 people? then the fine should be 8 * value of life. the value of life is ~ $9M in the US, so the fine should be 72 million dollars.
If the firefighters need to get to a hydrant, they will get to it, car or no car. I think we should do away with fines and just let people assume the risk that if there's a fire, your car windows might be smashed to run a hose through it.
Likewise, if the car is impeding traffic, tow it out of there. The fine does nothing to fix the problem.
I’ve never understood this. The number of parking spaces that can’t be used because of fire hydrants is enormous, most of those hydrants will never be used, and it seems like a car in front of a hydrant would only be a very small delay for firefighters.
Every fire hydrant is thirty feet of unparkable space. Some streets "double up" by putting them at intersections (so it's only ten additional no-parking feet), but that's enough to fit three or four cars.
On the other hand, I'm not sure it's proven that having more parking spaces translates to better outcomes, namely less pollution caused by lowering time spent to find a parking space.
