72-year-old Max van Kuilenburg from Eindhoven has already received a parking fine three times, although he has a disabled parking card. That always happened about five meters from his house. “Scandalous! We now regularly look outside to see if we see a scan car.”
Max has COPD, emphysema and asthma. The stretch from home to the car is already quite a task for him. Before we can talk, he’s panting. “I’m tired.”
He lives near the PSV stadium and the scan car can be found there regularly. Here are public parking spaces for which you have to pay. Thanks to his disabled parking card, Max is allowed to park here without paying, but the scan car doesn’t know that.
That car is full of cameras that can check 1200 cars an hour. As ‘evidence’, Max was sent photos of his parked car. The photo was just a dark plane. He starts laughing loudly. “Did you see it? What nonsense.”
“I’m having trouble with it.”
The scan car has been driving through Eindhoven for two years and suddenly the receipts are sliding through the letterbox. “No or too little parking fee paid,” the ticket reads. If the scan car sees a license plate that has not been paid for, an inspector will come and check the spot. “You can see my disabled parking card very clearly. Even from a distance.”
He had to pay the fines first and only then could he object. Max has paid two fines: twice 68.30. “I am retired. I have to survive on my AOW and my pension.”
The third time, Max threatened to go to court and the fine was refunded. He shows the folder full of letters. “I have a lot of trouble with it.”
“The municipality must apologize.”
“It is crazy for words that you get a fine three times, at the same address. You have to wake up to that,” says city councilor Cor Verbeek of Ouderen Appèl Hart for Eindhoven. He has asked questions. “This will not be with him alone. The municipality must apologize.”
The solution, he says, is simple. “The license plate must be linked to the address and the person. Then they can see that someone has a disability card. This should happen next year I’m told. It remains to be seen whether that will work and how it will turn out.”
Meanwhile, the editors have received more reports of similar cases in Brabant.
