On November 21, 2009 I attended the last home game of the Georgia football season. The game was against Kentucky and Athens was crawling with crowds of people – 96,000 to be more accurate, plus the six-figure population that comes into town seeking just to tailgate and attend the after-party. Parking was limited, as one would expect on a game day. Luckily for me, there was one spot open on the street that was very familiar to me.
Let’s go back…
As an employee of the University of Georgia, my office was on campus. Having inherited from my father a financial mentality caked with frugality, I had not purchased access to official UGA parking lots for the new academic semester. In part, this was to save money . However, my staff position at UGA was temporary in nature, the expiration of which was quickly approaching. And remembering the hassle of acquiring an overpriced parking pass the previous year (there was some confusion about my staff priority – the system still identified me as a student), I determined that life would be made simpler if I could just arrive to work early and park on the street ahead of the 8am rush of students heading to class.
As it turns out, I am not a morning person. After only a few days of making it to work by 7:30 AM, I slowly found my arrival inching closer and closer to 8:00. That would be fine too, except that by 7:45 or so, the mad influx of students on their way to class would consume all available street parking. Luckily, I drive a small car and pride myself on being a master parallel parker, so on most mornings I was able to squeeze myself between a couple of loosely spaced vehicles. However, there was one location between two driveways that was large enough for a car of any size to park, and for a car the size of mine, it could be done with plenty of breathing room. The curb did appear yellow in color (though very faded), yet I began noticing vehicles parking there to seemingly no consequence. In fact, I observed the same vehicle parked there on consecutive days – indicating to me that either they felt secure in their behavior or they were a glutton for punishment and potentially a tow.
After observing these repeat offenders, I decided to have a closer look. The curb was located directly in front of a newly constructed building (completed about a year before), and so a ~3-foot section of the curb, where their driveway emptied out into the street, was brand new and untouched. A little further down, adjacent to the pre-existing driveway that serves as a subtle entrance to a hidden parking deck, there appeared to be a solid coat of yellow paint, eroded by years of wind, rain, and ice, but still smooth in texture and very noticeably colored. The aged section of curb centralized between these two driveways, however, did not have such a coat of paint. Yes, the curb maintained a faint yellow tint, but no physical layer of paint was visible . Additionally, there was a skid mark on the front side of the curb that began close to the old driveway and abruptly ended where the smooth texture of paint also ceased. On the other side of the newly constructed building, just around the corner on an adjacent street, they had installed a second, brand new driveway. But the curb surrounding this driveway had received a nice fresh coat of paint – yellow where expected, and black where deemed appropriate – clearly defining the existing amount of parkable curb.
So logic took over my thought process. It seemed to me that this curb’s questionable state of repair was a result of the yellow paint being intentionally removed in preparation to receive a fresh coat of paint – just as the curb on the adjacent street had been. For reasons unbeknown to me, apparently this curb had gone overlooked at the completion of the construction project and so it never received said repainting.
Based on my observations, inspections, and rationale, I decided to experiment and try parking there myself. So the next day, I did just that. Arriving at work around 8:00 AM, I found this location vacant and promptly parked my 2008 red Chevy Aveo hatchback on the curb in front of this new building. Upon leaving work around 5:00 PM later that day, I found my car still safely parked, with no indication of consequence. No windshield citation, no warning, no tire boot, and clearly no towing service. So the following day, I tried again. Same result. The next day, same result. Two months later, I had consistently parked my car in this location every weekday for nine hours each day without the slightest indication of wrongdoing.
Back to game day…
My unpainted curb, with its faded yellow tint, violated the trust that I had reliably placed upon it. I exited the stadium with a couple of friends and we made our way to my car. As we approached, I could see what appeared to be a piece of paper strategically placed under my windshield wiper. It was common to find concert fliers, restaurant coupons, etc. being mass-distributed in such a fashion on game days, and so I assumed that this was just another piece of trash that I could ignore and throw away when I got home. But no, on this day the Athens-Clarke County Police had failed to recognize the logic and effort I put into justifying my parking decision. I was ticketed for parking on a yellow curb, which carries a fine of $50.
Immediately I noted the negligence of the ticketing officer. Aside from overlooking the points of inspection that I performed on the curb itself, this citation was laden with mistakes. It took only seconds to notice, after retrieving the ticket from my windshield, that the day’s date was incorrect (marked 10/21/09) and that the fill-in-the-blank location details did not exist. So within about 30 seconds or so, I had resolved to appear on my assigned court date and dispute the infraction.
Tags: judicial system, non-jury trial, parking ticket, traffic violation
