Via Daring Fireball: Tickets pile up on van with dead driver

Parking tickets pile up on van with dead driver
Women says her dad apparently lay dead for weeks beneath N.Y. highway
updated 8:06 a.m. CT, Fri., June 5, 2009
NEW YORK – A New York City woman says her father apparently lay dead for weeks in a minivan while police repeatedly left parking tickets on the vehicle.

This reminds me of when I was at the University of Maryland as a graduate student in 1991, and my Toyota Corolla was stolen from the parking lot (this was the day before I settled on my condo and right about when the First Gulf War broke out). At first I thought I forgot where I parked it, but ultimately after driving around all the lots with the University cops, I reported it to University of Maryland police as stolen and my insurance company (GEICO). Thirty days later they found the car in a farm field outside Bowie Maryland with 4 parking tickets. Nobody bothered to cross-reference the license plate for the parking tickets (all on the U of Md campus, where someone had taken it joyriding) with the database for stolen cars.
Even more annoyingly, I was notified on Day 31 when I went to pick up my settlement check from my insurance company that my car had been found the day before. There was later a voicemail for me at work. The insurance company paid for some $3000 in repairs (which is about what they would have given me in cash, and the car served me fine for a few more years. The thieves committed annoying vandalism on the car (stabbing the dashboard) and stole the tires and the trunk rack, but it was all reparable. The insurance company also had to provide a rental car for nearly 2 months (1 month for the stolen car, 1 month for repairs). GEICO I am sure lost money insuring me in the long run.