alt Hacker NewsSame is true in Iceland. It’s just the established norm. Much less costly vs installing gates and barriers and payment terminals and easier to add paid parking to non traditional locations where constricting entry/exit to barrier’ed lanes would be a challenge or impossible. Shifting the payment experience to the user’s smartphone. It’s still a bit foreign to visitors from places where this isn’t the norm but for Iceland and Icelanders it works well and is a non issue.
To be fair, the relationship between the Icelandic people and their government and their corporate class is wildly different vs that in the US in 2025 to say the least.
A month or two after a visit to Iceland (my favorite country by far by the way), I received a ticket in the mail for speeding. It included a picture of the car I rented and a closeup of the driver's face- a face that did not belong to me (presumably another renter).
Luckily, a quick phone call and a copy of my drivers license cleared things up, but systems like these inevitably lead to "guilty until proven innocent" scenarios instead of "innocent until proven guilty".