I'm curious to know what range of costs were given to the driver at fault. I guess that's irrelevant now. I sort of like the idea though, so long as the costs are reasonable. The economic cost accrued from traffic backup relating to an accident can be insurmountable. Nothing urks me more when someone breaks down or causes a minor fender bender and doesn't move their car out of a traffic lane, and traffic backs up for miles as a result.

But I certainly see the reason this was banned. This would only have been the first form of double taxation for emergency services, and savvy cities would have extended it as far as they could to increase funding.

Matthew -
I sort of had mixed feelings about this too. It might be more appropriate if the fee was charged to non-residents, but then that's probably unconstitutional.