5 ms·

> And the second solution is make the penalties on trucks meaningful. Have the fine amounts escalate with every violation within a certain period, with no cap (

by vageli 7y ago

> And the second solution is make the penalties on trucks meaningful. Have the fine amounts escalate with every violation within a certain period, with no cap (so that a ticket could eventually cost tens of thousands of dollars for a particular scofflaw truck, rather than the current ignorable amount of around a hundred). And tow/confiscate trucks that have enough tickets. Part of the reason these companies can get away with settling is due to the large volume of tickets they receive. In the case of a fine escalating for each ticket, I would imagine that the company would then fight each ticket in court. This could easily overwhelm the courts. This seems like a fundamentally unfixable vulnerability that has been exploited by other actors (like Scientology).

stefan_ 7y ago
This seems to be a recurring theme here, as if a parking violation is some kind of murder/capital crime situation that requires a diligent team of prosecutors and lots of hard evidence. Except, it's not. A parking violation is strict liability for the registered owner of the car and trivially proven by a mere photograph. Odds of beating it in court are very very small.
- vageli 7y ago
  It has nothing to do with the odds of beating it in court. If I have 1000 tickets and opt to contest them all, good luck scheduling any other case (especially if I bring photos, testimony, etc for each case). Further, it is not "strict liability" and there are defenses that can be raised.
  - masonic 7y ago
    If you want to contest 1,000 citations from distinct incidents, the court could give you 1,000 separate dockets, appearance times, and locations.
klyrs 7y ago
When the tickets start to run up into the tens of thousands of dollars, it's got a twofold impact on the overwhelming nature of these tickets. First, if some of the proceeds are diverted back to the court, then the court can afford to hire more folks to deal with the paperwork. Second, when a single ticket gets to be more expensive than a day's profits, the cost/benefit analysis will shift accordingly. If lots of businesses continue breaking the law, the system funds itself -- if not, then mission accomplished.
imtringued 7y ago
That doesn't make any sense. One could simply implement a yearly fee for companies that accumulate a large number of traffic violations (which are checked for validity as a whole unit). This would not force companies to pay the fees for the tickets but it would force them to keep the number of tickets low. If they decide to fight the tickets then they will have to pay the yearly fine anyway and since they keep accumulating tickets they will never actually reduce their backlog to manageable levels and eventually become forced to pay the ticket to stop the yearly fine.
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
Every time we fail to keep companies accountable, we reinforce the belief/precedent that there is one law of the rich corporations, and another for everyone else. This is going even beyond that: a company can repeatedly break the law and threaten the city. Why should the common man respect the law when this keeps happening? Why should he not conclude "if I can steal and get away with it, it's just payback".
delfinom 7y ago
The problem is, many companies would just price the tickets into the cost of delivery, the same way they already do but just more. Alternatively,a company like UPS could basically completely implode and deadlock the NYC courts by contesting every single ticket individually. They have enough money to play chicken with the city, and the city will lose almost immediately.

by vageli 7y ago

stefan_ 7y ago

This seems to be a recurring theme here, as if a parking violation is some kind of murder/capital crime situation that requires a diligent team of prosecutors and lots of hard evidence. Except, it's not. A parking violation is strict liability for the registered owner of the car and trivially proven by a mere photograph. Odds of beating it in court are very very small.

vageli 7y ago
It has nothing to do with the odds of beating it in court. If I have 1000 tickets and opt to contest them all, good luck scheduling any other case (especially if I bring photos, testimony, etc for each case). Further, it is not "strict liability" and there are defenses that can be raised.
- masonic 7y ago
  If you want to contest 1,000 citations from distinct incidents, the court could give you 1,000 separate dockets, appearance times, and locations.

klyrs 7y ago

When the tickets start to run up into the tens of thousands of dollars, it's got a twofold impact on the overwhelming nature of these tickets. First, if some of the proceeds are diverted back to the court, then the court can afford to hire more folks to deal with the paperwork. Second, when a single ticket gets to be more expensive than a day's profits, the cost/benefit analysis will shift accordingly. If lots of businesses continue breaking the law, the system funds itself -- if not, then mission accomplished.

imtringued 7y ago

That doesn't make any sense. One could simply implement a yearly fee for companies that accumulate a large number of traffic violations (which are checked for validity as a whole unit). This would not force companies to pay the fees for the tickets but it would force them to keep the number of tickets low. If they decide to fight the tickets then they will have to pay the yearly fine anyway and since they keep accumulating tickets they will never actually reduce their backlog to manageable levels and eventually become forced to pay the ticket to stop the yearly fine.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago

Every time we fail to keep companies accountable, we reinforce the belief/precedent that there is one law of the rich corporations, and another for everyone else. This is going even beyond that: a company can repeatedly break the law and threaten the city. Why should the common man respect the law when this keeps happening? Why should he not conclude "if I can steal and get away with it, it's just payback".

delfinom 7y ago

The problem is, many companies would just price the tickets into the cost of delivery, the same way they already do but just more. Alternatively,a company like UPS could basically completely implode and deadlock the NYC courts by contesting every single ticket individually. They have enough money to play chicken with the city, and the city will lose almost immediately.