Communications: electrical – Vehicle detectors – With camera
Reissue Patent
2002-06-21
2004-10-19
Crosland, Donnie L. (Department: 2636)
Communications: electrical
Vehicle detectors
With camera
C340S425500, C340S932200, C235S384000, C348S148000, C348S159000, C348S104000, C705S013000, C705S418000, C194S902000, C382S104000
Reissue Patent
active
RE038626
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to law enforcement and more particularly to an automated means for detecting vehicles that have been parked for longer than the legally prescribed period.
2. Background
Municipal governments enact regulations to govern the parking of cars along city streets. Typically, time limits are posted along each street and parking fines are levied on vehicle owners who park their cars for longer than the posted time. Two benefits result from the practice of making and enforcing on-street parking regulations:
1) Traffic congestion is reduced by forcing motorists parked for long periods to find suitable off-street parking arrangements, thereby vacating their more convenient, on-street parking spaces for use by motorists wishing to stop for short periods.
2) The parking fines levied on motorists who violate parking regulations create revenue the municipality.
In order to reap these benefits, the fundamental technical problem faced by Parking Authorities is how to detect when vehicles are in violation for the posted time limit. Heretofore, two violation-detection and enforcement technologies have been employed:
1) Parking meters
2) Timed chalk-marking of car tires
Enforcement Using Parking Meters
Parking meters are timing devices installed adjacent to each parking space that the Parking Authority wishes to enforce. Once installed, parking meters permit motorists to rent each on-street parking space for short periods. To rent the space, the motorist must insert coins into the meter, thereby starting a timer mechanism that suppresses display of an “Illegally Parked” flag. When the purchased parking period has expired, the “Illegally Parked” flag is again made plainly visible, thereby enabling a Parking Enforcement Officer patrolling the area to see at a glance that the parking space is illegally occupied. The officer continually inspects every parking meter along the patrol route and issues citations to those cars that are illegally parked.
Detecting parking violations with parking meters is an effective means of enforcing regulations, particularly in areas with high traffic density such as downtown commercial districts. A significant advantage of using parking meters to detect infractions is that they also provide a means for collecting a “pay per use” rental fee. The requirement to insert coins provides a continual stream of revenue to the municipality, even if no vehicle is ever cited for an over-parking infraction. However, each parking space requires its own parking meter, which is an expensive piece of equipment to purchase and install. The capital costs of initiating a parking metered enforcement program are considerable. Since the Enforcement Officer must visually inspect each parking meter along the route, patrolling the meters is a tedious, labour intensive activity that adds to the overall cost of metered enforcement. In congested, downstream areas, officers are often obliged to patrol the route on foot, thereby adding to the labor cost of the system. Maintaining the meters in good working order and emptying their contents is another significant expense related to metered enforcement.
Enforcement Using Timed Chalk-Marking of Car Tires
The high cost of installing, maintaining and patrolling parking meters limits their cost-effectiveness in many on-street parking situations. In particular, low-density areas outside the downtown core may be considered “not profitable enough” to warrant the use of parking meters. In these areas, the other method of parking enforcement commonly employed is “timed chalk-marking of car tires” (hereinafter referred to as “tire-chalking”).
Parking regulation enforcement using the tire-chalking methodology is as follows:
1) A route is chosen such that all the parked cars along it are subject to the same parking regulation (e.g. 2-hour parking limit). The Officer patrols the route and stops beside every parked car that's encountered. Typically, the patrol is done using a car however foot and bicycle patrols are also common modes of transportation.
2) A temporary mark is made on one of each car's tires using a piece of chalk or similar marking utensil. In order that the officer can attest to having made the mark, some effort is made to keep all the marks similar in size, color, shape and placement.
3) At regular intervals along the route, the time is noted, thereby the enabling a time to be estimated for when each of the chalk-marks was made.
4) After all of the cars parked along the patrol route have been marked, the officer retraces the same route. Care is taken to regulate the speed of the patrol such that the officer returns to the location of each of the chalk-marks just after the permissible parking period has expired (e.g., if the posted time limit is two hours, then the officer must return to the same location slightly more than two hours after chalk marks were made at that location).
5) During the second trip over the patrol route, the officer visually inspects the tires of each and every vehicle looking for a chalk-mark made during the previous circuit. A found chalk-mark serves as evidence that the marked vehicle has not moved during the period the Officer has been away patrolling the rest of the circuit.
6) When a chalk-marked car (i.e. an illegally parked car) is sighted the officer issues it a parking citation. After writing the details of the infraction onto the citation and attaching it to the offending vehicle, the Officer continues along the route, slowing down or speeding up as necessary to stay on-schedule for detecting subsequent parking violations.
The chalk-mark method of detecting parking violations is commonly used along lightly traveled streets where metered enforcement would not be cost-effective. Since no capital investment in parking meters is required to provide infrastructure, a tire-chalking enforcement program is less costly to initiate than an enforcement program based on parking meters.
Furthermore, tire-chalking provides a more flexible means of parking enforcement. Patrol routes can be quickly adapted to suite the changing parking habits that generally occur at different times of the day, on different days of the week or in different seasons of the year; something that meters cannot easily accommodate.
While the capital cost of using chalk-marks as a means to enforce parking regulations is less than that of using parking meters, the labor cost of using chalk-mark detection is significantly higher. The principal factor contributing to the workload is the need to manually mark every car along the patrol route . . . a task that is both physically demanding and time consuming.
Furthermore, the route must be patrolled twice before any infractions can be detected whereas parking meters guide the Officer to infractions every time the route is patrolled. The high labour cost of first applying chalk-marks and then searching for them significantly reduces this methodology's attractiveness as a parking enforcement means. Furthermore, the second traverse of the patrol route is often dedicated only to the inspecting tires and issuing citations, thereby permitting newly parked vehicles to go unmarked.
Furthermore, detection and prosecution is based entirely on the presence of chalk-marks on each vehicle. Vehicle owners can evade prosecution simply by hiding the mark. Typically, each tire is marked on its tread surface so simply moving the car a few feet within the parking space will rotate it away from the officer's view, thereby making it impossible to detect the infraction during the second traverse of the patrol route. If the chalk-mark has been made on the side of the tire rather than on its tread, the mark can still be easily rubber off to evade detection.
Regardless of whether parking regulations are enforced using parking meters or tire-chalking, once a parking infraction is detected, creating a legal citation and serving it on the vehicle's owner takes a considerable amount of time and effort. The main factor contributing to thi
Crosland Donnie L.
Gavin Geoffrey K.
Kilpatrick & Stockton LLP
Pratt John S.
Visionary Technology Inc.
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