Everywhere in the world, and especially in countries that are still not fully computerized, the law enforcement authorities are faced with huge problems regarding unpaid fines, and this is especially true for parking fines. Do you pay your parking fines? You don’t have to answer that… let’s continue with the story.
Because of this problem, the law enforcement authorities have devised an excellent way to force us to pay our dues immediately - they simply tow the car away. However, towing is a clumsy and expensive process.
I once heard a novel solution to this problem from the city of Kiev, in the Ukraine. It appears to have been taken right out of the school of Systematic Inventive Thinking.
What do the authorities there do when they come across an illegally parked car? They simply remove the license plates from the offending vehicle and take them to the depot.
The owner of the car has no choice other than to go down to the depot and pay the fine so that he can get his license plates back and continue driving his vehicle.
What SIT tools have been used here?
I’m sure you recognized the Division technique: the license plate is a part that is separated from the rest of the vehicle.
But the Task Unification technique is also involved here. The license plate is the agent of the action that forces the owner of the vehicle to pay the fine.
I invite readers to suggest inventive ways of avoiding getting a fine in the first place.
Brilliant! But wouldn’t this encourage offenders to apply Division again and just take the license plates off another (legally parked) vehicle and place them on their own car instead? Granted, they would now be guilty of two crimes, but until caught, the nice thing about taking someone else’s plate is that from now on, they wouldn’t even care about where they park anymore…