[Karunamon]

In the case of traffic law, yes, you do choose very much to be fined.

What the law says or doesn't say is irrelevant in that distinction, it takes conscious choice (or carelessness: also illegal) to blow through a red light, or to park in a non parking area, or to drive over the speed limit. The law in general is extremely arbitrary, and you run the risk of penalties when you choose to break it.

The case of the guy in the article was the victim of an extremely broken system (outsourcing of payment plans? WTF?), but that doesn't mean the law he broke is somehow invalid.

In general, a failure of enforcement does not render the relevant law invalid.

[mikeash]

It does not take carelessness to park in a no-parking zone where the signage is illegible, yet people still get fined for it, and there is typically no recourse.

It does not take carelessness to drive at the speed of traffic rather than turning yourself into a hazardous obstacle by driving 20MPH slower than everybody else, yet in many places this is a speeding violation.

It does not take carelessness to drive through a red light when the yellow is set so short that you don't get enough warning to stop for it.

Inconsistent enforcement may not render the law invalid in terms of whether it can be enforced on those who get unlucky, but it does have major effects on the law's legitimacy in a moral and public opinion sense.

It is basically impossible to live life without violating traffic laws. So "you choose to violate them" is at best meaningless and really is just plain wrong. If we're all going to violate them then we need to at least make sure the punishment isn't completely crazy.

[SeanLuke]

> What the law says or doesn't say is irrelevant in that distinction, it takes conscious choice (or carelessness: also illegal) to blow through a red light, or to park in a non parking area, or to drive over the speed limit.

What about errors on behalf of the government? I have been fined mistakenly for parking without a valid sticker, even though the (correct and valid) sticker had been affixed to my car for months. Did I choose to be fined in this case?

[nmrm2]

Like so many things in life, this is so much easier said than done. The city that I live in has occasionally street cleaning days during which you can't park on certain streets, and in the winter it can be extremely difficult to find a parking spot that's within safe walking distance from my residence.

Things aren't so bad for me b/c I have an extremely flexible job, so I can leave early and get a good spot when everyone else is still at work. And I'm fairly fit and young, so if I get home at 1:30pm and there are no free spots (this happens...) I can walk a mile or two in cold temperatures without worrying about my health. Or, worst case, I can take the $30 fine.

It's not hard for me to imagine a large class of people for whom none of these options is a real option.

[sixothree]

The set of people who have never broken a law includes zero people.

Further if one group is targeted more often than another I don't quite consider that a choice in the way you describe it.