In an attempt to emphasize the seriousness of unpaid parking violations, the Fort Worth Police Department has decided to start towing vehicles with more than one unpaid ticket, in addition to writing new parking tickets for the towed car.

This decision has its obvious student downsides with increased fines and the hassle of retrieving towed cars. The biggest hassle of all is students might not even know the towing is coming.

Despite the increased penalty, signs have not been updated, leaving parking violators unaware of the repercussions for their wrong doing.

People with more than one outstanding parking ticket may have a hard enough time understanding parking laws as it is. Now they get the shocking surprise of a missing car.

It is understandable and justifiable for the city to push the violators to pay their ticket fines and towing could be a great way to do that. However, by not including clear parking signs, the city is not giving drivers fair warning.

Drivers are going to be punished for something they assume will be a minor financial issue, which ends up being a trip to the impound lot and a much larger cost.

Perhaps in addition to the increased penalty of towing, increased visibility of penalties could act as a deterrent to illegally parking.

An obvious correlation between action and its result exists with most of life’s choices, and certainly with most of the law, as well.

People keep themselves from doing wrong for moral reasons and because of consequence.

A lack of moral conscience for illegal parking seemingly does exist, but people definitely like to avoid being towed.

So how about letting those forgetful parkers know what they are getting into before getting tow trucks involved?