Three times in eight months, the scan car threw 72-year-old Max van Kuilenburg from Eindhoven on the receipt. He has a disabled parking card and can therefore park for free. How can things always go wrong?
Since May 2021, the municipality of Eindhoven has been working with a scan car to check whether parkers have paid properly. In the past year, the special car brought in almost 3.5 million euros for the municipality.
Thanks to the scan car, 50,000 fines were issued to illegal parkers. In the first three months of this year, there were already more than 14,000.
1 in 10 fines unjustified
Because the car equipped with cameras does not know everything and cannot see everything, there is an extra check. Boas check after every report of the car whether the parking fine is justified. If not, the receipt will be torn up before it is sent.
But even that extra check apparently does not make the system watertight. Many ‘wrong’ tickets are intercepted by the boa and immediately destroyed. Yet many unjustified receipts also slip through. Because even after a boa approves the fine, the fine turns out to be unjustified in ten percent of the cases.
No explanation
These 5200 motorists got their money back last year after they appealed. A spokesperson for the municipality does not have an explanation for the large number of unjust fines.
So far this year there are 900. People indicated that they had bought a parking ticket, that the parking meter was not working or that there was indeed a disabled parking card behind their windscreen. Like with Max.
Boa doesn’t know either
The 72-year-old Eindhoven resident has COPD, emphysema and asthma. That is why he has a disabled parking card and is allowed to park in public parking spaces without paying. But the scan car does not know that and does not see it. A boa, which is going to check, should be able to see that.
But that also does not give a hundred percent guarantee. And that is why it could also be that the 72-year-old Max has been wrongly thrown on the receipt several times.
Hit three times
In any case, according to Max, the fault does not lie with him. “You can see my disabled parking card very clearly. Even from a distance,” he said earlier.
In the meantime, Max has had to pay three fines of 68.30 euros. He got one back when he threatened to sue. According to a spokesman for the municipality, that fine was torn up after protests showed that the photo of the boa was too unclear.
According to the spokesperson, the other two objections clearly showed on photos that there was no disabled parking card. Those fines are justified, he says.
Digital parking card
The municipality hopes that some of the problems with the scan car will be over by next year. Work is being done on a digital version of the disabled parking card that the scan car does recognize.
It would in any case save a lot of misery for Max and other drivers with a disabled parking card. The problem with all other unjust fines has not yet been solved.
READ ALSO: Max gets a ticket 3 times, even though he has a disabled parking card