An Austrian woman faces a stretch behind bars after repeatedly ignoring requests for payment by the authorities.
An Austrian woman was finally jailed yesterday after failing to pay €24,000 ($30,860) worth of parking fines.
While a jail sentence may sound extreme for unpaid parking tickets according to reports the woman, who has not been named, managed to clock up the hefty fines for parking misdemeanors over the course of a 2 year period.
However, despite over 700 attempts by local authorities to contact her and obtain payment during that time, she failed to meet any of the charges.
Speaking to reporters, police officer Herbert Mattersdorfer commented: "Of course we have had people ignore three, four, five or even 10 reminders, but 700 ... that is unheard of"
Consequently the 38 year old civil servant from Graz in southern Austria now faces a 500 day stretch behind bars as punishment for her habit of flouting the city’s parking restrictions.
It is likely, however, that her sentence will be broken down into a series of 42 day chunks. This is due to a technicality written into Austrian law that states that 42 days is the maximum sentence that can be allocated for this type of 'diminutive' offence.
