Reply to DC driver with $12k in tickets flees US Park police, kills 3 people

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][url]https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/05/02/dc-traffic-tickets-driving-penalties/[/url]

[b]More than 2,100 vehicles have at least 40 outstanding tickets, according to data from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, and about 1,200 cars are linked to fines exceeding $20,000 over the past five years. Topping the list of offenders is a car with Maryland tags that has 339 outstanding tickets worth $186,000 in fines and penalties.[/b]

"Vehicles can rack up fines over years — which the car’s owner is responsible for paying — but the person or people driving those cars can keep their licenses if they do not pay."

[b]Since 2000, more than 3 million photo-issued tickets have gone unpaid in the city for a total of $840.8 million, which includes a doubling of original fines and a 20 percent collection fee applied to outstanding tickets. An additional 2.9 million parking tickets also have gone unpaid, for an extra $398 million in fines and penalties, DMV records show.[/b]

For now, the city relies on booting and towing vehicles in hopes that drivers will pay their ticket debts to recover their vehicle. [b]But with only four crews assigned to booting, officials said it is impossible to target high-risk drivers because city workers do not know their locations. Babers said it is likely that offenders “are aware that we boot and tow so they may then park the vehicle in a garage or on private property,” which is off-limits to city crews.[/b]

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Only 4 crews. And teens were out on my street right after booting, working to get the boots off. What does it even matter if they don't tow immediately and kid criminals are savvy enough to remove boots?[/quote]

For less than 1% of the amount of the outstanding tickets the city could run two dozen tow truck crews 24x7.[/quote]

Where would they tow the cars? The city has one impound lot (Blue Plains). It's always full, even now. Having financial agreements with private towing companies opens up a world of problems, as anyone who lived in DC in the 1990s knows too well, and the city will never go back to that system. And DC isn't going to create new impound lots (imagine the YIMBY howls).
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Ah well, do nothing and shrug it is then?[/quote]

No, do something that actually is possible. There is literally no place to put these thousands of towed cars you're dreaming of.[/quote]

They aren't going to be able to tow thousands of cars overnight.  And, they can only keep them for so long - the owners are given a time limit and an ultimatum, they will have to either pay up and retrieve their cars, or face having their cars going to auction or taken to a scrap yard.  Either way there won't be vast endless lots with thousands of cars as you suggest.

How about stop coming up with bogus arguments and just pay your tickets?[/quote]

They get inpounded, you get warnings and time, then then go to auction, get cleaned up and sold by the buyer. [/quote]

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