Traps with Speed Traps

PLEASE steal my identity and pay my speed trap tickets.

The worst part of getting speed trap tickets in Chicago is that you know you got them when they happen. I recall seeing the flashing light in February when I was through a park zone—it was February, there were definitely no people in a park, and it was dark. But I knew my future self would be annoyed.

And he was when the mailing came this week. $35 for speeding in a park zone with no park activity. I consider it an additional tax. I’ll pay for it. I wish we could just pay $150 a month to speed whenever we wanted, but that’s a different story.

So I went online to pay for it. Instead of just having me log in and pay, I had to solve those puzzles to prove that I was a human.

“Identify the ends of both parts of this line.” Curvy line. Hard to find each end. “What will fit on the object pictured?” It looks like a chair. OK. I failed a couple of times. I miss when we just had to solve a single digit math problem. If the robots have figured out how to get past that, I am 79% sure that they’ll be able to figure out what a line is soon too.

Also, what am I verifying that I am a human for anyways? If a robot wants to take care of paying my ticket, I am ok with it. I would think that the city would be ok with it, they are getting their money.

I propose a better system—transparently list all of the parking tickets, by number, on a simple website. You can do a search and find your ticket number, then pay it. No proof of being a human needed. There’s some charity then too. If you’re feeling kind, go online and pay someone’s traffic ticket. It’s like paying for the next person’s coffee.

This is part of two ongoing subplots: the internet is unusable, and many things are completely unnecessary.