I recently booked some backcountry campsites in a national park (in the USA). My plan is to hike from one town to another over a few days, and the camp sites are by reservation only. These sites are not accessible by road. When i made the reservation, it required me to put in the make, model, color, and license plate of my car. I will not have a car with me, nor could I (since there are no roads), yet this information was required of me (no opt-out).

I’m assuming this is just because the system (recreation.gov) is run by a giant defense contractor (booz allen hamilton), and they want to harvest as much information as possible. It made me wonder what other government services are only available for car owners that are completely unrelated to car ownership. I’m inspired by seeing a post about while ago that talked about government services that require you to have social media accounts.

I’m sure there are other examples of this phenomena.

P.s., luckily, the sign up form is dumb, and it didn’t use dropdown menus for car make/model/color, so i just put in gibberish.

  • pc486@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    17·
    20 days ago

    That’s probably a bug when translating forms or the ranger’s intent. Our rangers deeply understand the meaning of “paving paradise,” hence there’s limited parking at trail heads. Car details on permit forms are there so rangers can tow away parking abusers instead of cutting down trees to make a bigger parking lot.

    Traditionally you’d write “N/A” or “NONE” if you’re being dropped off or hiking through. I suspect that detail got lost in translation to the digital format by making all fields as required.

    All that said, thanks for being thoughtful and not driving into a national/state park when it’s not necessary. Rangers and us like-minded folk appreciate it.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      20 days ago

      Technically, you can have 1 reservation on their system with multiple cars, so if you booked like a 15 person site, you could arrive in 4 separate cars. The receipt reflects this with a line item of “vehicles=x”. For mine, it says “vehicles=0”, so somehow it recognizes that the gibberish wasn’t a real car, but i was still required to do it.