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I'm confused. Why? Are we talking "I didn't do anything wrong" tickets, stuff that is unfair but hard to fight? Or is this about "I park wherever I want and tr

I'm confused. Why? Are we talking "I didn't do anything wrong" tickets, stuff that is unfair but hard to fight? Or is this about "I park wherever I want and try to avoid the consequences"? So far it seems that most of the customers are of the latter variety. While I understand the motivation to act like an asshole, this service empowers .. assholes? We're regularly discussing if free apps (downward spiral) or free content (adblockers) are okay. But free parking is fine, right?

smackfu 13y ago
The reasons they show in the screenshot seem more like the former. "Meter broken", "Curb paint faded", "Missing signs". But I don't see how they can contest those things without proof, and getting proof seems like it would be rather expensive. Pay one person to go out and take a photo and your profits are gone.
- darklajid 13y ago
  Quite frankly, the first one is the only one I believe in, but then again I'm from a country far, far away and all that. Meter broken? Happens. Curb paint faded? Doesn't apply here (That's something that works a little different), but I have a hard time seeing that being a _common_ reason. Really. Common sense and remains of paint would probably be enough. Missing signs: Seems to be too big of a deal. In my world there's no way you can hand out tickets without having signs in place. You'd be contested again and again even without this service and would stop that behavior - or put up signs. This is not a temporary failure or a result of decay. And then there's the 'meter times unclear' or 'other' part. Again, if this is trying to fight unfair tickets I'm a huge fan. It just doesn't look like that and the comments here seem to be mostly 'Yeah, where do I sign up to get that ticket removed'. I .. park where I'm allowed to park, search a parking spot if I'm not sure OR (last time: 2 weeks back) risk a ticket and pay it if I get one. I guess I lack the empathy for people that have a different way here..
  - techsupporter 13y ago
    For San Francisco (the city in the screenshot and the only city that ever seems to matter when getting app-based startups), the rule is that parking at a broken meter is still very much valid. Same goes for where I live and everywhere I've lived and tried to park in multiple places in the U.S. I suspect this is half an enforcement problem (doesn't look good in the papers, "City Tows People Parked at Busted Meters") and part not denying use of a parking spot just because the one pay box is busted. Broken meters are one reason why cities in the U.S. are going to parking time window stickers and fewer pay boxes. As for things like faded curb paint and missing signs and so on, that's not an excuse the operator of the vehicle can use. Even if there's no red curb paint here, you're still not allowed to park within 30 feet of an intersection (on the direction-of-travel side) or 10 feet of a fireplug or 5 feet of a driveway. Those are all things you're expected to know by virtue of having a driver license. Now, being ticketed for being over-time on a free parking stretch that's limited to 2 hours when the sign has gone missing might be one thing, but the folks around here put up so many signs in so many places, I think a person would have a hard time making that stand up. Ultimately: if someone isn't sure and wants to not risk incurring the fine, he or she shouldn't leave a hunk of metal and plastic sitting on the public right-of-way.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  The standard of proof in minor civil infraction cases is weak. If they find they don't need to get proof, I'm sure they won't. I recently read of a town trying to get their parking situation in order and they found that 30% of their meters were broken.
  - fixermark 13y ago
    Indeed. I once had a small claims lawyer brag to me that while defending an expire-meter ticket, he was able to prove that the township had failed to conduct state-mandated Bureau of Weights and Measures calibrations for years. Tickets issued in that time were retroactively canceled.
- fixermark 13y ago
  In the United States, presumption of innocence implies that if the defendant pleads innocent, it is upon the parking authority to prove that the violation described in the ticket actually happened. Parking authorities tend to overtax their resources for such niceties (on the assumption that most people who are fined will plead guilty and pay the fine rather than burn personal time showing up in court); when an innocent plea happens, it may not even be worth the resource investiture for the officer who issued the ticket to show up to plea.
  - fwenzel 13y ago
    You are technically right but you're missing one thing: The parking authority here has an easy time to prove that you've ostensibly parked against the rules. Say, if the curb paint was faded, all they have to show is a map showing where you parked and how that's a special area. Done. Suddenly it's up to you as the defendant to prove that that wasn't the case. Outside of completely bogus tickets, proving that they were technically allowed to write the ticket is a trivial affair for the authorities.
devindotcom 13y ago
I get this impression too, have since the first services of this type appeared around 2 years ago. Yes, it can be used to easily dispute bad parking tickets. But the reason it works is that an office somewhere is pumping out boilerplate with your name on it at a faster rate than the courts have time to deal with it — this is the reason so many tickets get dismissed, because our court system is already so overtaxed that it must decide rather peremptorily on minor topics like this. In other words they're basically doing a paper denial-of-service attack on the courts, which as they do not have the capacity to do all these hearings, simply default to halving or nixing the ticket. Personally, I think it is vile.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  > In other words they're basically doing a paper denial-of-service attack on the courts, which as they do not have the capacity to do all these hearings, simply default to halving or nixing the ticket. Personally, I think it is vile. As someone who has had to deal with both illegitimately issued traffic and parking citations, I think its brilliant. Traffic tickets and parking tickets, for the most part, are for revenue and not safety. If they were for safety or actual enforcement, the punishments wouldn't be so heavily weighted towards fines. Anytime technology can stick a wrench in poor government, be it incompetent civil servants, or poor policy, I'm all for it. If you don't have the capacity to provide hearings that are allowed by law, don't issue the citations.
  - javert 13y ago
    > If they were for safety or actual enforcement, the punishments wouldn't be so heavily weighted towards fines. I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I disagree with your argument. Any punishment other than a fine for parking or speeding violations would be draconian, except for repeat offenders. It's not OK to throw someone in jail or suspend their license (potentially removing their ability to get to work) for a minor speeding violation.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      > It's not OK to throw someone in jail or suspend their license (potentially removing their ability to get to work) for a minor speeding violation. Agreed. At the same time, this would entail correcting law enforcement of speed limits to be more realistic, with other traffic citations directing you to remedial training/driving school that is affordable and not profit driven. Self-driving cars make all this moot though. The sooner they get here, the better.
john_b 13y ago
You've identified two classes of customer for this app but speculated, without evidence, that most of them fall into only one of those classes. Ironically my objection to this service is essentially the opposite of yours. I see this app as imposing a middleman's fee on something that, in a perfect world, citizens would be able to perform themselves with the same probability of success. Contesting an illegitimate parking or speeding ticket is a fairly straightforward matter, but in my (personal) experience, unless you bring a lawyer to the courtroom your arguments will simply be ignored. In my area, the courts do not even keep records, so you can't use the judge's blatant dismissal of your concerns* as grounds for a mistrial on appeal. Maybe I'm not understanding how the service works, but I see this service as simply a specialized and cheaper lawyer replacement. Maybe that's progress since you can actually save some money if you win, but you're still paying a more powerful entity in order to get respect in a court of law. *I've literally been told by a judge, "stop speaking now, your turn is over" seconds after showing that the officer didn't use a LIDAR gun correctly per the manual, and upon cross examination didn't even know the type of device he was using (Me: "Were you using a radar or a laser based device on <date> at <time>?" Officer: "I was using the device the department issued me." Right afterwards: "Me: If you don't know what kind of device you were using, how can you know the effective range of the device?" Officer: "I believe it was effective and accurate when I used it."). The judge repeatedly referred to it as a "LASAR" device...
- darklajid 13y ago
  You're right. And I'm the first to admit that I cannot even begin to understand the full potential of the application. I'm not from the US and these things are decidedly local and special. But from where I'm standing, you either park correctly or risk a ticket. In fact, this country here just raised the minimum amount for parking offenses because people did the math and found out that in some cases a ticket was cheaper than paying (parking ground, whatever). So in my (certainly subjective, shaped, hardly applicable to the service at hand) world view you're just not fighting tickets. You either don't get them or you risked to get them. Exceptions exist, but are a teeny, tiny fraction and wouldn't be enough to keep a service like this afloat. Could I be totally wrong: Sure.
- rayiner 13y ago
pslam 13y ago
I doubt there are many people in the latter category. It is simply too expensive to live like that, unless you're very, very wealthy, which is a very small number of people, and probably only a very small number of those who are assholes at all times. Even at 50% probability of successfully contesting a ticket, it's still much cheaper to find a parking meter and pay for parking. Or pay for two taxi rides. Or, if you're one of the above mentioned wealthy people, hire a full time driver. On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where people are unfairly penalized for badly signposted regulations, faded paint (especially red in the dark lit by low-pressure sodium), regulations only a local would reasonably know about, or even broken meters. There is a high cost in personal time to contesting these. I think this is a problem which may be solved quite well by this app.
- rayiner 13y ago
  My favorite: in Wilmington, DE, parking meters are not enforced on holidays. The punchline is that it's state holidays, and they celebrate Veteran's Day in late October, instead of mid-November.

smackfu 13y ago

The reasons they show in the screenshot seem more like the former. "Meter broken", "Curb paint faded", "Missing signs". But I don't see how they can contest those things without proof, and getting proof seems like it would be rather expensive. Pay one person to go out and take a photo and your profits are gone.

darklajid 13y ago
Quite frankly, the first one is the only one I believe in, but then again I'm from a country far, far away and all that. Meter broken? Happens. Curb paint faded? Doesn't apply here (That's something that works a little different), but I have a hard time seeing that being a _common_ reason. Really. Common sense and remains of paint would probably be enough. Missing signs: Seems to be too big of a deal. In my world there's no way you can hand out tickets without having signs in place. You'd be contested again and again even without this service and would stop that behavior - or put up signs. This is not a temporary failure or a result of decay. And then there's the 'meter times unclear' or 'other' part. Again, if this is trying to fight unfair tickets I'm a huge fan. It just doesn't look like that and the comments here seem to be mostly 'Yeah, where do I sign up to get that ticket removed'. I .. park where I'm allowed to park, search a parking spot if I'm not sure OR (last time: 2 weeks back) risk a ticket and pay it if I get one. I guess I lack the empathy for people that have a different way here..
- techsupporter 13y ago
  For San Francisco (the city in the screenshot and the only city that ever seems to matter when getting app-based startups), the rule is that parking at a broken meter is still very much valid. Same goes for where I live and everywhere I've lived and tried to park in multiple places in the U.S. I suspect this is half an enforcement problem (doesn't look good in the papers, "City Tows People Parked at Busted Meters") and part not denying use of a parking spot just because the one pay box is busted. Broken meters are one reason why cities in the U.S. are going to parking time window stickers and fewer pay boxes. As for things like faded curb paint and missing signs and so on, that's not an excuse the operator of the vehicle can use. Even if there's no red curb paint here, you're still not allowed to park within 30 feet of an intersection (on the direction-of-travel side) or 10 feet of a fireplug or 5 feet of a driveway. Those are all things you're expected to know by virtue of having a driver license. Now, being ticketed for being over-time on a free parking stretch that's limited to 2 hours when the sign has gone missing might be one thing, but the folks around here put up so many signs in so many places, I think a person would have a hard time making that stand up. Ultimately: if someone isn't sure and wants to not risk incurring the fine, he or she shouldn't leave a hunk of metal and plastic sitting on the public right-of-way.
Zigurd 13y ago
The standard of proof in minor civil infraction cases is weak. If they find they don't need to get proof, I'm sure they won't. I recently read of a town trying to get their parking situation in order and they found that 30% of their meters were broken.
- fixermark 13y ago
  Indeed. I once had a small claims lawyer brag to me that while defending an expire-meter ticket, he was able to prove that the township had failed to conduct state-mandated Bureau of Weights and Measures calibrations for years. Tickets issued in that time were retroactively canceled.
fixermark 13y ago
In the United States, presumption of innocence implies that if the defendant pleads innocent, it is upon the parking authority to prove that the violation described in the ticket actually happened. Parking authorities tend to overtax their resources for such niceties (on the assumption that most people who are fined will plead guilty and pay the fine rather than burn personal time showing up in court); when an innocent plea happens, it may not even be worth the resource investiture for the officer who issued the ticket to show up to plea.
- fwenzel 13y ago
  You are technically right but you're missing one thing: The parking authority here has an easy time to prove that you've ostensibly parked against the rules. Say, if the curb paint was faded, all they have to show is a map showing where you parked and how that's a special area. Done. Suddenly it's up to you as the defendant to prove that that wasn't the case. Outside of completely bogus tickets, proving that they were technically allowed to write the ticket is a trivial affair for the authorities.

devindotcom 13y ago

I get this impression too, have since the first services of this type appeared around 2 years ago. Yes, it can be used to easily dispute bad parking tickets. But the reason it works is that an office somewhere is pumping out boilerplate with your name on it at a faster rate than the courts have time to deal with it — this is the reason so many tickets get dismissed, because our court system is already so overtaxed that it must decide rather peremptorily on minor topics like this. In other words they're basically doing a paper denial-of-service attack on the courts, which as they do not have the capacity to do all these hearings, simply default to halving or nixing the ticket. Personally, I think it is vile.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
> In other words they're basically doing a paper denial-of-service attack on the courts, which as they do not have the capacity to do all these hearings, simply default to halving or nixing the ticket. Personally, I think it is vile. As someone who has had to deal with both illegitimately issued traffic and parking citations, I think its brilliant. Traffic tickets and parking tickets, for the most part, are for revenue and not safety. If they were for safety or actual enforcement, the punishments wouldn't be so heavily weighted towards fines. Anytime technology can stick a wrench in poor government, be it incompetent civil servants, or poor policy, I'm all for it. If you don't have the capacity to provide hearings that are allowed by law, don't issue the citations.
- javert 13y ago
  > If they were for safety or actual enforcement, the punishments wouldn't be so heavily weighted towards fines. I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I disagree with your argument. Any punishment other than a fine for parking or speeding violations would be draconian, except for repeat offenders. It's not OK to throw someone in jail or suspend their license (potentially removing their ability to get to work) for a minor speeding violation.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    > It's not OK to throw someone in jail or suspend their license (potentially removing their ability to get to work) for a minor speeding violation. Agreed. At the same time, this would entail correcting law enforcement of speed limits to be more realistic, with other traffic citations directing you to remedial training/driving school that is affordable and not profit driven. Self-driving cars make all this moot though. The sooner they get here, the better.

john_b 13y ago

You've identified two classes of customer for this app but speculated, without evidence, that most of them fall into only one of those classes. Ironically my objection to this service is essentially the opposite of yours. I see this app as imposing a middleman's fee on something that, in a perfect world, citizens would be able to perform themselves with the same probability of success. Contesting an illegitimate parking or speeding ticket is a fairly straightforward matter, but in my (personal) experience, unless you bring a lawyer to the courtroom your arguments will simply be ignored. In my area, the courts do not even keep records, so you can't use the judge's blatant dismissal of your concerns* as grounds for a mistrial on appeal. Maybe I'm not understanding how the service works, but I see this service as simply a specialized and cheaper lawyer replacement. Maybe that's progress since you can actually save some money if you win, but you're still paying a more powerful entity in order to get respect in a court of law. *I've literally been told by a judge, "stop speaking now, your turn is over" seconds after showing that the officer didn't use a LIDAR gun correctly per the manual, and upon cross examination didn't even know the type of device he was using (Me: "Were you using a radar or a laser based device on <date> at <time>?" Officer: "I was using the device the department issued me." Right afterwards: "Me: If you don't know what kind of device you were using, how can you know the effective range of the device?" Officer: "I believe it was effective and accurate when I used it."). The judge repeatedly referred to it as a "LASAR" device...

darklajid 13y ago
You're right. And I'm the first to admit that I cannot even begin to understand the full potential of the application. I'm not from the US and these things are decidedly local and special. But from where I'm standing, you either park correctly or risk a ticket. In fact, this country here just raised the minimum amount for parking offenses because people did the math and found out that in some cases a ticket was cheaper than paying (parking ground, whatever). So in my (certainly subjective, shaped, hardly applicable to the service at hand) world view you're just not fighting tickets. You either don't get them or you risked to get them. Exceptions exist, but are a teeny, tiny fraction and wouldn't be enough to keep a service like this afloat. Could I be totally wrong: Sure.
rayiner 13y ago

pslam 13y ago

I doubt there are many people in the latter category. It is simply too expensive to live like that, unless you're very, very wealthy, which is a very small number of people, and probably only a very small number of those who are assholes at all times. Even at 50% probability of successfully contesting a ticket, it's still much cheaper to find a parking meter and pay for parking. Or pay for two taxi rides. Or, if you're one of the above mentioned wealthy people, hire a full time driver. On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where people are unfairly penalized for badly signposted regulations, faded paint (especially red in the dark lit by low-pressure sodium), regulations only a local would reasonably know about, or even broken meters. There is a high cost in personal time to contesting these. I think this is a problem which may be solved quite well by this app.

rayiner 13y ago
My favorite: in Wilmington, DE, parking meters are not enforced on holidays. The punchline is that it's state holidays, and they celebrate Veteran's Day in late October, instead of mid-November.