Looks like a subwoofer. There’s your startup idea. It will be useless for audiophiles, but convenient for anyone who wants to destroy stuff using resonant frequencies.
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How about this idea: drill two small holes at appropriate points, and repair with a clear plastic plug. In case of barnacles, remove plugs and take off barnacle.
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If they catch you, you’ll probably face the same fine you’d face for driving with a cracked or chipped windshield.
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Yep, I came here to link to that.
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Honestly it doesn’t even need to get tracked. Cars get booted (and presumably barnacled) for multiple outstanding, unpaid fines or leaving your car illegally parked for sufficiently long to rack up multiple fines. What makes anyone think the authorities using these won’t bother to record which car it was used on? That they won’t bother to check the license plate/registration for all those tickets they wrote? A thing that must be listed on the ticket, and is looked up before writing a new one.
However easy or difficult this thing is to remove its not going to be as simple as take it off, ditch it, and run away. Its going to be take it off, ditch it, run away. Lie low in another jurisdiction for a while. Ignore the summons and additional fines that get mailed to you, blow the court date for the unpaid fines and crime of defeating the device, and spend the foreseeable future hoping noone runs you for outstanding warrants the next time you’re pulled over.
Which is the exact thing that happens when people cut off the boot. A thing that actually happens and is apparently trivial with the right tools. People typically end up getting arrested in short order after doing that and serve jail time. More typically, and the only time I’ve ever seen boots in the wild, the serial fine avoider just abandons the car. Hell a lot of the time these things are applied at the impound lot to prevent you from “liberating” your car without paying the fines. None of this gets you out of the fines. None of this creates less trouble for you.
The point of these things is to inconvenience you into paying the fines. So as to avoid having to track you down, clap you in cuffs, and force the issue at court.
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Where I work, people periodically park in our lot all day while they do other stuff. We don’t really enforce the ‘patrons only’ sign, but there may come a time when someone decides to abandon a (stolen or destroyed) car here, or park one in a way that causes problems (blocking another car or the exit). Our problem arises because we don’t have a contract with a local towing company to get rid of the offending vehicle; most tow companies don’t take away random cars without either a contract or payment up front if the car’s not yours.
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What if you have stone damage? Will this thing work on that or will it cause a ‘star crack’ that could have been repaired to crack the entire windshield?
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You couldn’t report an abandoned vehicle to the city and have them deal with it?
Since it’s a library (state entity) parking lot, not a public street, the county won’t touch it. “Not our problem.” It’s moderately satisfying to consider popping the car into neutral and pushing it out into the street.
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Then shouldn’t the state have jurisdiction to have it removed? Call the governor’s office! Just kidding. Some bureaucrat somewhere should have the authority to have it towed though. Just keep escalating up the hierarchy until someone makes a decision or takes action.
You know what to do:
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It’s from Carlin on Campus - slower drivers are idiots, faster drivers are maniacs
here:
this one is more extreme: talk about Complete Streets ! LOL
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The last time I had a windshield replaced it was about $200. It’s good that this provides a ceiling on how much they can extort with this.
And everyone knows that a long scraper is the way to remove barnacles.
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It’s not fine for the traffic cops who have to squat right beside traffic sometimes to put them on.
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Certainly you guys can be more creative in your civil disobedience than THAT.
I thought of this too (well, drilling once it’s on; I like your plastic plug idea). Is drilling a windshield is a good idea? Seems to me it would be a stress-riser that would encourage a crack to start.
I know! Coat the glass with vaseline.
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Driving off with your head out the window might be dumb, but “stealing government property?” Bullshit. If you attach something to my car, it’s the same as putting something into my pocket. If anything, the parking enforcement officer is guilty of abandoning government property.
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A flat-ish metal tube, stiff enough to slip under the outer edge, and pointy enough to get under the rubber lip of the suction cup. If breaking the seal isn’t enough, blow into the tube and force air into the vacuum. I see no need for exotic solutions, when the only thing needing to be hacked is the vacuum, so attack the vacuum.
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“a built-in GPS tracker will know where they are”
So many techno-peasants act like GPS was magic. It’s just radio man! Wrap that barnacle in metal foil grounded to the frame, and it won’t know where it is or be talking to anyone.
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Contact your local fraternity?
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