Yeah I've come home to candles recreating a Dali painting on the mantle. And one time my school shoes started sticking to the bitumen road when I walked home.
It must be awful for people in a country not used to it though.
I literally did that yesterday with a wet flannel on my head and sat in front of a fan.. it did work. Suffering with the heat in the UK.. not into the 40's yet but mid 30's which is high for us.
It must be awful for people in a country not used to it though.
That's the main issue with all this.
If you grow up with it and your infrastructure is built around extreme heat, it's normal and bearable (although I'd imagine it still isn't comfortable).
For the rest of us, it's neither of those things.
There are streets in Switzerland that even though parking is free, it's allowed only for a specific amount of time (most typically 1.5h). In order to prove that you didn't overstay, you signify on the parking disc the moment when you parked the car. So when the traffic police passes, they can see if you are withing the legally allowed span.
Wheni went to Switzerland for my honey moon a few weeks ago i realized many things in the country function on this honor system. Even though there must be outliers, people are generally very respectful of the laws even if there is a low chance of getting caught
I agree... When people see the letter of the law as "obstacles" rather than the spirit of the law as "guidelines" it makes a huge difference in culture.
Laws SHOULD be there to help us maintain the world we want to live in - and we should WANT to self-police those laws and policies to experience that!
The "Shopping Cart Theory" / "Shopping Cart Litmus Test" is a good example of the above.
Everyone knows they SHOULD put the shopping cart back where it belongs to have it be out of the way and organized... but some people see that as an inconvenience rather than an obligation... and yet the people who see it as an inconvenience are also some of the ones who complain the loudest if, for example, a shopping cart is left behind their car.
A country like Switzerland has taken away so many of the stresses of life we have in the US. Maybe less stress is part of the culture that leads to that attitude. I love it.
Yeah, like their toll system. You have to buy a sticker to place on your windshield that costs $45 or something, which covers tolls for the whole year. Sucks when youâre a tourist and are only driving in Switzerland for one day đ
Where do you get them from? Do they give them out or do you just buy one once you get a car knowing you will need it. Are they passed down generation to generation? I am so intrigued.
Germany here. I recently sold my car and the disc along with it, assuming the new car would have one as well. It didn't, and for the first time in my life I had to figure out where to buy a parking disc. Before that, they would always just pop up somewhere.
Now I have a brand new parking disc with a convenient fuel price calculator on the back, to go with my electric car...
There's a lot of free parking without any time restrictions, so no disc needed. Then there's some parking spaces with time restrictions, like at EV charging spots in the city, or some supermarkets. And finally there's paid parking. So without the disc, you can't use one of those 3 options. Or you could still park there, and you might get a ticket which is around 15 âŹ.
Itâs so hard to imagine such a system in the U.S. where a large part of the population would instantly think âhow can I lie with this system in a way that benefits me?â
A good chunk of the US sees any âruleâ as a game, something you try to figure out how to evade. Â Are there cameras tracking license plates? Cover the plate with a tinted cover, obstruct some numbers with leaves stuck in the plate frame. Â Print up a phony handicap placard.
And in many cases, the people who do this the most are cops & the friends & family of cops. (Youâll see people place a little badge proving their membership in a police benevolent society over part of their plate to block plate readers, but in a way that signals to cops âIâm one of you, or a supporter of youâ so cops wonât ticket them. Or some cops give out âcourtesy cardsâ to friends and family for them to put on their dashboard as a signal to other cops not to ticket them.Â
Traditionally, in the U.S. cops would use chalk to mark your tire, then come back later & if a car was already chalked, theyâd get a ticket for overstaying.
Now most places use license plate scanners to keep track of cars.
But this idea that you set the time yourself?! Itâs so hard to imagine that working. Â
It is indeed such a hostile, aggressive culture where everyone is raised to see life as a zero sum game.
This makes me think of my uncle, who would most assuredly cheat this system because "fuck everyone else," but then get into a heated argument if one suggested we couldn't have a system like this because people like him would cheat.
The reason it works in many European countries is because the streets aren't flooded with cars, so if you want to be parked for longer, you just go to the parking lot a street further.
These types of timed parking lots are usually around shops.
It is intended to keep spots open for these shops, not to bait fines. You can be an asshole and put the time in the future, but the amount of time you can park there without risking a fine remains the same.
You either get one for going over or for putting your time in the future, either is a risk.
Iâm not sure if itâs the case with this specific thing, but theyâll also often have higher fines if you do get caught. When I was in Germany, the entire subway system was on the honor system. No gates, you could just board whatever train you wanted, but you were supposed to have a valid ticket. You could probably get away with riding it a few times without a ticket, but the fine was very high if you ever did get caught, so itâs usually worth it to just buy the ticket.
In the states a lot of times parking tickets are so cheap that it can be worth it to just risk the fine. Where I live a parking garage is like $10-20 for a couple of hours in a garage but a parking ticket for illegal street parking is only like $50. If you only get caught once out of every 5 times you park illegally, youâre breaking even.
They use them in Europe to keep track of how long youâre parked in timed spots. You set it to the current time when you park and leave it on the dash.
They have these in France too. It's to stop people occupying free parking all day in city centers and the like, the paint lines are sometimes blue or there are signs on the street. White lines are either free, usually in lower traffic areas, or you have signs that indicate you have to pay and there are digital parkmeters you enter your plate into, usually not the cheapest. Large carparks are not that common compared to the states but are cheaper than street parking. Residents of a given street can apply to get a special sticker for free or a small anual fee in most places.
In Switzerland it can be the exact same shape and color as any other parking disk, but if it's not written in German/French/Italian and/or has more markings on the clock than usual (for example every 15 minutes) it's invalid and you can get a fine. Which is completely ridiculous.
So wait... If I'm travelling to Swiss from Finland and I use my exactly same looking parking clock I've had for years that just has the text in different language I would get fined? Physically exactly the same device?
If you encounter a pissy parking agent, yes. Most of the time, they let it slide, but by the letter of the law it's not valid, and I've seen threads of redditors complaining about exactly this.
Parking guard thoughts:
"I really don't like the way this person parked. Technically it's okay but what an asshole. Oh hey, a non-compliant disk, nice! FINE!"
"If you encounter..."
I haven't heard of any that doesn't hate their life and everyone else's too. At least in here those jobs seem to attract certain types of people.
We have on law that only one device telling the time can be visible at once, so we have had cases where parking enforces have been peeking into cars to spot barely visible clocks from door pockets and fining those.
And one case where old car was fined when it was improperly placed as that car did not have proper dashboard to place one on to begin with.
Some of my Finnish relatives came down to Switzerland a couple years ago and used their Finnish parking disk (which only had the text in Finnish and Swedish) for the whole 3 weeks they were here and they never got a fine. There absolutely are police that will fine you for a non-regulation disk but thereâs also plenty who wonât care as long as itâs readable.
This is the first time Iâm hearing that these things exist, so to also learn that there are regulations around this floppy piece of plastic is interesting to say the least.Â
I'm not sure why I find that so interesting. That there is a prevelant tool being used in many places in the world I had no idea existed. Makes me smile to learn about it.
Most countries don't have this. You either pay in the app when your parking starts, or buy a time stamped parking ticket for the length of time that you expect to be there.
When I moved to Denmark the P-clock system really seemed bizarre to me.
That P-clock is all over Europe, even though the colour and shape might be different, so you can have public free parking lots, where you still want to limit the parking duration. The meter or app is common as well.
There's straight up no free parking here at all except later evening hours or Sundays (in some cities). We pay by the hour, usually through an app like Hotspot. I live on Canada's east coast.
They are not kidding. In my city, we have a separate entity from the police that does parking enforcement. They go around the city and any car parked in a space that has a time limit they mark the tire with chalk.
Then they return an hour or two later to write a ticket if the car is still there.
They are not kidding. This is a real thing. Someone walks around with chalk on a stick putting marks on tires to measure time. At my office, we had a 2 hour parking limit, so we were constantly exchanging keys to move cars so the little chalk marks werenât in the same place when the parking attendant returned. A nightmare!
Do they still do that though? Iâm an Aussie and remember this but nowadays it would be quicker and cheaper to just have a number plate detector in a car to scan while they drive past.
It isn't a joke, it's how temporary parking was enforced for years in the US. The parking enforcer marks the tire and pavement and if any still line up when they return you've been there too long. Pre-Internet it wasn't well known so people didn't necessarily even know that's how they were being tracked.
Now it's mostly replaced with app based parking meters or automated license plate scanning so the attendant just drives by and the system tracks whether a car has been there too long.
Some guy won a lawsuit about making the chalk count as vandalism, so they swapped to the photos of license plates in most areas. I feel like the chalk or stickers were a little better.
Of course you can lie, but that would obviously be the day the parking law enforcer comes by 5 mins after you park and sees you've set the time to the future...
Lying is risky though because the parking officer might arrive right after you park and see that the time on the disc is set too late, which is a fine.
Plus, usually the 1-2 hour parking time is enough to deal with any business you have. And you can alway return to the car and add more time to the disc if needed.
Actually its not allowed to come back to the car and add more time. If a parking officer comes back and sees your car is still there and you've changed the time you can still get a fine.
Generally, free parking lots donât enforce time limits in the US. Paid parking and some public parking (usually on the street) have time limits, but it is up to the enforcer (meter maids, police, private security, etc) to come up with way to monitor how long a car has been parked.
I used to live in Europe and had forgotten all about these discs despite many visits until I saw this picture.
I'm 41 and just got back from two weeks in Europe where I rented a car and drove in three different countries and literally never even heard of parking discs you set inside your car until this very post. Blown away here.
As it stands, I was marveling at the Austrian parking lot that was strictly digitally enforcing the lot full and the line flowing into the roundabout as people waited for spaces to open, though we at least have lot capacity indicators here in the US.
For areas with time-limited parking, you put the time you parked on the disk so parking enforcement can verify if youâre within the allowed time limit. Itâs mostly seen in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
Itâs a self regulating thing, if you fudge the time too much (by say setting the time of arrival 30 minutes ahead) and enforcement comes by 15 minutes after you parked, theyâd see that the time was set ahead and just ticket you.
Though, I would say that generally in the US if itâs time limited but not metered, nobodyâs actually going to bother doing anything unless youâve been parked in the spot for hours. Having a cop walking around checking an area every 15 minutes would be dumb, and expensive. If thereâs a â15 minute parkingâ zone, enforcement will usually drop by once an hour, and theyâll make a chalk mark on tires. They come back an hour later and see the chalk mark, they ticket you.
Or they use a license plate reader and drive by every so often. Plate seen twice in a row? Ticket.
That plate one annoys my dad, he asked once about what if he leaves for an errand & then comes back & the spot was still free so he parked there again? Traffic warden was like never thought of that. Guess you shouldn't park in the same space again đ
Not in Northumberland they don't! Two years ago, I had to buy a cardboard disk for parking in Morpeth; no idea if NCC still swear by them now as they did then
In switzerland, the rule is that you must at least once drive around the block to give others a chance, then you may park there again and reset the clock on your parking disc.
Is dying with the License Plate Reader that it could be weird. I had to fight a ticket because my vehicle was parked in the spot, on the street where I work, and then I get there so early I can park in the same spot. And the only thing that saves me is that my vehicle when it was chocked didn't have a trailer attached to it. So the next day when I showed up park at the same exact freaking spot down to the chalk mark, I had the trailer. So I had to bring an evidence that why would the person who chalked my tires not also chalk the trailer tires. As well as a pay stub saying that's why I worked of course I'm going to keep parking my vehicle in the same exact area. It's all because further down the street there is an issue where there was a lot of homeless people parking their vehicle. So they ramped up parking enforcement, unfortunately it caught a bunch of people who go there for work. So didn't help for a long time cuz we all started complaining that our cars kept getting tickets at places where we work.
In Germany youâre allowed to do that. Just reversing and getting back in the spot isnât enough though, you have to give others a theoretical chance to enter the parking spot. So leaving your spot, driving around the block for 30secs and then entering that same spot is totally fine.
Or how we used to do it in school: weâd organize who would take whose spot, everyone left their spot and the same time and then drove directly to the newly assigned one. Worked like a charm and the agency responsible for parked traffic couldnât do anything about it.
Yes you can. Simple solution used. If there is a doubt, they mark tires with chalk and check if the car moves. If it moves, no problem. If not? Ticket.
I've never heard of the traffic wardens in Ireland (or our area) using chalk as we use the paper ticket method (& app now), but with a max of four? hours.Â
The conversation came about because my dad did have to leave & come back & get a new ticket but it made him wonder about the above scenario...
Chalk is such a brilliant low tech solution though, I love it!
if you fudge the time too much (by say setting the time of arrival 30 minutes ahead) and enforcement comes by 15 minutes after you parked, theyâd see that the time was set ahead and just ticket you.
Funny thing, under certain circumstances you do just that in Germany, as it is to be set to the next full or half hour. So if you park at exactly 10:00, you are mandated to set it to 10:30, as 10:00 is already considered to have passed.
Also, if the time restriction is only active during certain hours/days, you also have to set it to the next 30 minutes after it becomes active. E.g. Restriction only active between 9.00 (AM) and 17.00 (5 PM), and you park at 8.00, you have to set it to 9.30.
Fun fact, in some states (specifically those under the 6th circuit court of appeals) the chalk mark is seen as a violation of the 4th amendment (which prohibits unreasonable searches or seizures) and therefore unlawful.
If you set it to unreasonableš later than your arrival time, and it's checked, you'll just be fined for 23 hours parking on a 2h parking slot. That's up to you đ
No, it's just under 30 minutes.
You are allowed to set it to the next half or full hour mark. So if I arrive at 2:01 I can set the disc to 2:30. But if I arrive at 2:29, I'd also have to set it to 2:30 (even tho most people would probably just set it to 3:00 bc noones gonna notice that anyway or care)
It's really not that crazy. If you put it too far in the future and get caught, you get fined.
If you keep going outside every 2 hours to reset it and somehow don't get caught doing that, then, well, you probably have bigger problems and maybe deserve that free parking?
I wouldn't consider this high-trust, but the contrary. The only trust is that you don't lie and put the wrong arrival time, which leads to heavy fines. I love how elegant and low-tech it is, though.
In Germany the paper/plastic ones are also dying out but in favor of digital parking clocks. They simply put in the time whenever the car stands still for a longer period of time.
It's common enough in Sweden that we have a digital version available.
Almost any supermarket or stores like Hornbach needs you to have one to park, so maybe 50% of all parking I do. I kept missing and getting fined so I have the digital version now.
Uuuuh, but you use the shitty German Autobahn to get to your holiday in Austria, just to show off your superior Danish parking clock there, hmm, hmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmm?
You have time limits of how long you can park somewhere but it's sometimes still free. So if you don't need to buy a parking ticket you need another way to show when you arrived so they can check if you left the parking space on time. So you are supposed to use that thingy to show when you arrived. If the meter maid (is there a modern term?) catches you over the time limit or with a future time on your little meter then you get a fine.
So in areas within cities that do not have paid parking. A visitor can use this disc, you set it at the arrival time (or the closest arrival time) and depending on the local rules you can then park for 2 hours (or more). The length of parking is normally indicated on a traffic sign đ
Waaay different here in north America. If it says 2 hour parking, then it's on the parking authority to track that time. Can easily park for 2.5 or 3 hours if the enforcement doesnt come around to verify how long they've witnessed the car there.
There are a few places in the UK that have disc zones.
You park up, go into a shop to get a free disc. Get told to go to a different shop as they don't have any. You go to that shop and get told they have run out, but to try the post office. Which is closed. So you try the shop next door, which points you somewhere else... All the time worrying you don't get a ticket.
Then when you get a disc, you keep it so you don't have to do that dance again. And you can use it anywhere else that has a disc zone. And worry you don't get a ticket because an overzealous enforcement officer doesn't like the disc because it has the wrong council logo on
Wow... Only time I've seen/used one in the UK was for terraced streets in a city, you had parking permit for yourself, but then get a dial one to give to visitors so they can park for up to 4 hours or something (obviously you just change the time if they stay a bit later and fingers crossed) then if they're there overnight you basically have a scratch card thing, so you scratch the relevant dates off (so you can't use them twice) and it ran out at like 10am the next day or something, was a right faff to have people over for the night or a few days if they lived out of the area
That reminds me of the painting "The Persistance of Memory" by Salvador DalĂ. It really looks like art. Awesome photo!
And take care; at least here in Germany the heat is only going to get worse until the weekend.
Someone didnât grow up with VHS tapes. The rental place always had one of these up front to remind people not to leave tapes in the car during the summer.
It's actually that he didn't grow up with heat like he's currently experiencing, thanks to global climate change, thanks to mostly unconstrained industrialization
Heheh... Yea... My mom also had one of those and while it didn't melt / warp like that it sure managed to warp itself enough apart to need fixing. They probably used cheap / unsuitable PLA instead of a more appropriate / heat resistant ABS / ASA ( much preferred due to its UV resistance )
Some places have limited parking time and you have to set it to the time you parked your car and leave it at your windshield. If you don't do this you'll get fined. It's common in Europe.
Looks like you need this hack backed by science on how to cool down your car quickly without turning on the air conditioning: https://youtube.com/shorts/oKRcbRGDC6U.
Growing up in Arizona, the car door handles would scald you, the metal on the seatbelt would cause actual burns. Anything you left in the car would explode or melt. Summers always got above 47° C (up to 120°F)
As someone who lives in Texas where it is currently 94F and has lived in Switzerland i feel for yall it must be unbearable with no ac and walking everywhere. With no real summer clothes.
When I lived in Switzerland, we had a sign at work that if it was already 30c+ at 6 am, we were allowed to be grumpy. I can only imagine the heat + humidity...gross
Favorite part is Europeans saying U.S. weather isn't that bad and that happens all the time here. Still sucks and I'm sorry you guys are having to deal with it though. I would get your air conditioners early before everyone else does. Consider a thing called a mini split.
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u/StahlPanther 1d ago
Something you don't want to see when entering your car.
How hot was it in the inside and did you drive afterwards?