Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/15/fight-parking-ticket-fixed/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb

by jaredsohn • 13 years ago

103 136 13 years ago

rdp• 13 years ago

The first question that came to mind upon reading this was: "are lawyers involved in the contest letter filing process? If not, I wonder if they may have a problem re: unauthorized practice of law in CA.

joeframbach2• 13 years ago

Do lawyers need to be involved? The rules are here: http://www.sfmta.com/services/permits-citations/contest-cita...

All it takes is to submit a letter. Doesn't say who has to submit the letter.

rhino3692• 13 years ago

It wouldn't have to say anything like that. The determination of practicing law without a law license isn't based on what the government body requires, but generally on rules about what is and isn't legal practice.

I assume they've looked at legal ethics decisions before they opened for business. But who knows, start ups sometimes cut legal corners.

russell_h• 13 years ago

Have you done that successfully?

My fiance got a ticket on Muni that was clearly in error (her Clipper Card record showed her tagging 9 minutes prior to the ticket being issued). We followed the instructions for submitting a protest, and never heard back. After some back and forth, it seemed like the protest process was just /dev/null-ed, so we paid up just to make the problem go away.

My take-away was that if you wanted to actually fight a citation you'd have to take them to court. As I understand it, fare evasion was a criminal offense until a few years ago, when they decriminalized it in favor of the new citation system, in order to save money on court costs.

Karunamon• 13 years ago

Don't you usually end up paying more in court costs + penalties if you fight a ticket in court and lose?

wikwocket2• 13 years ago

I don't know about California, but here parking tickets (as opposed to speeding tickets) are civil matters. They don't go to court, they're handled at City Hall like any other type of fee or fine.

There is an existing appeal process, and it's likely that they either say, "Okay, ticket dismissed" or "Sorry, ticket stands, send payment in."

dbbolton• 13 years ago

If Fixed gets your ticket dismissed, you pay it 25 percent of what the ticket would have cost. If it loses, you pay the ticket like normal but pay Fixed nothing.

I assumed this meant that Fixed would be picking up the legal fees (likely with the revenue from winning cases). If not, then there's really no advantage to using it except you don't have to show up to the court date.

schrodinger• 13 years ago

When I've fought tickets in New York and Connecticut, the first step of fighting a ticket is coming in for your 'court date' and waiting in line to talk to a prosecutor where you get about 5 minutes or less of negotiation. They'll usually offer you a deal, which is less than the original ticket. But even if they don't offer you a deal, you don't have to pay any additional court costs - you're just stuck with the original ticket, or the right to request a trial.

It's only when you request the trial that court costs and higher penalties come into play.

wikwocket2• 13 years ago

Pretty cool idea. I think it could really take off and go nationwide.

Helping people to deal with government labyrinths is always a good angle, especially when money is on the line. Here in Chicagoland there are dozens or hundreds of law firms that only exist to help residents appeal their property taxes. They do the research to find arguments for lower taxes, and do the legwork of appealing.

I would imagine that local government may have a hissy fit if this started to happen in other arenas, like for parking tickets, but there is clearly already an appeal process for tickets, and so they are really just using the existing system.

wehadfun• 13 years ago

Beautiful.

This is probably one of the better legal start ups.

papasmrf2• 13 years ago

Nah, nothing is better than the lawdingo.com.

devinmontgomery• 13 years ago

But what are future YC applicants going to use as examples of non-computer systems they've hacked?

tostitos1979• 13 years ago

This isn't the same thing it seems but I recall a documentary/movie about the dotcom craze in the late 90s called startup.com. My recollection is that the company portrayed in that documentary (GovWorks?) got the lucrative contract of handling NYC parking ticket payments online. Ah ... memories.

dnautics2• 13 years ago

startup dot com

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

I hate parking tickets so much that I follow posted signs and obey traffic laws.

dangrossman6• 13 years ago

So do lots of people that get ticketed anyway.

ogreyonder• 13 years ago

Yup. I've gotten 1 parking ticket in my life: I parked fully within a clearly marked, paid parking spot in downtown Austin. A stop sign nailed to a wooden stand showed up while I was at dinner along with a $100 ticket for parking to close to said sign.

derwiki• 13 years ago

A few years ago, I parked my car on the street in Nob Hill. Thursday night I verified that it was legally parked. I got a phone call from my roommate the next day saying they were about to tow my car. I rushed home from work. While I was at work, they put up a temporary 'no parking' sign and were prepared to tow less than 24 hours later. That was the straw the convinced me 'I could get towed in SF even if I do every thing right.'

This prompted me to sell my car within a month and switch to ZipCar.

dunham• 13 years ago

They're required to put up those signs at least 48hrs ahead, but good luck contesting it. My sister-in-law was hit with the same thing, done by "Precision Engineering".

She tells me that if you actually could prove they didn't give enough notice, there is a $1000 fine for the construction company.

SoftwareMaven• 13 years ago

If people are getting out of tickets for things like "the street isn't steep enough to warrant the curbing ordinance", then they were obeying the traffic laws, too.

nostromo• 13 years ago

That's a little naive.

Local jurisdictions are heavily incentivized to hand out infractions of any kind -- deserved or not. Why? Because they keep the money.

What do they spend the money on? Things like public employees and their benefits, including pensions. It's clearly a perverse incentive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

I've always thought that government shouldn't benefit from fines or seized property. I'm not sure what a good solution is. Perhaps they should take the money from fines and just light it on fire.

There shouldn't be a financial incentive for governments to hand out tickets and fines and seize property - the democratic incentive should be enough.

caprad• 13 years ago

That's a little naive.

Are you saying it is impossible to escape their devious plans, because I have managed to avoid a parking or speeding fine for the last 20 years, simply by following the rules.

parennoob3• 13 years ago

"I've always thought that government shouldn't benefit from fines or seized property. I'm not sure what a good solution is. Perhaps they should take the money from fines and just light it on fire."

In the case of parking violations, it could go towards directly subsidizing the cost of legal parking -- building new structures, etc. That way, you're not creating a perverse incentive of people directly benefitting from the fines they issue.

ivanplenty• 13 years ago

Agreed.

I've always wondered how differently municipalities would behave were the fines forbidden from funding operations. For example, what if all fines had to be paid to a trust, and only the interest from the trust may be used for capital projects? Then only taxes could be used to pay for operations. At the federal level this change wouldn't make a big difference, but at the local level it would affect 50% of some budgets.

I imagine a lot of what seems like frivolous ticketing would shift towards something else.

Edit: @stinkytaco -- Agreed. Maybe frivolous tickets would be replaced with frivolous taxes? The money does have to come from somewhere, and I agree that the vast majority of civil servants are just enforcing otherwise reasonable laws :) Still a fun thought experiment.

stinkytaco10• 13 years ago

As someone who works for local government, I think you are over thinking "heavily incentivized". Governments are heavily incentivized to respond to political whims. It's the reason NYC has free street parking and that North Dakota has no parking meters, despite some cities desperately needing them. The fact that it's so easy to be released from a parking ticket is proof that this isn't some cash cow localities are sitting on.

I frankly see no problem with citizens benefiting from people who don't think parking laws should apply to them through the increased services and lower taxes gained by parking revenue.

jjcm• 13 years ago

If you've lived in SF for any period of time, you'll know just how difficult obeying parking signs there actually is. There are zones which you need decals for to park during certain hours, but even if you have that decal you still have banned hours which vary per street in order to have the streets cleaned.

Going out of town for the weekend? Make sure you call your friend and arrange to have your car moved once or twice while you're gone. Working late? Better move your parked car in case you're in the wrong zone outside of daylight hours. Having a car required more maintenance than having a cat when I was living there. Even if I wasn't using my car at all, I'd often have to move it three to four times a week just to avoid tickets. I ended up getting about one or two a month while there.

jessaustin• 13 years ago

I've never lived in San Francisco, but I dealt with similar situations in LA and Honolulu by not having a car. At some point, it just isn't worth it.

dnautics2• 13 years ago

In arlington VA, I once got a parking ticket issued outside of the 9-5 parking restriction hours; in the same place i got a ticket with an address that was nowhere near where i was parking; and another that had a totally fictional address altogether.

In retrospect, I should have contested these tickets by going to court, grilling the parking attendant (under oath) on the details, getting them very specifically, and then catching them in an act of perjury with evidence. Would Fixed go the extra step to do this? Someone needs to hold these attendants accountable.

dc_ploy• 13 years ago

Arlington,Bethesda, and DC are some of the worst violators of this. Don't even get me started on those machines they use to "enforce" the speeding law.

papasmrf2• 13 years ago

Do they do the administrative hearing as well, or just submit your protest? Cause if they think they are going to have non-lawyers attend hearings on behalf of others, I think the CA Bar might have something to say about it.

Ricapar• 13 years ago

I've seen this idea before, and it is common in the trucking/delivery business. Cops/meter maids/etc take advantage over delivery trucks who park in front of businesses to quickly load and unload merchandise, especially in large cities.

I know a few people who work at such companies, and they all have some sort of subscription service with a third party that handles all these parking tickets for them. If they lose, they pay the ticket, nothing else. If the company wins, they pay a percentage of what the ticket was.

To give you an idea of what type of advantage cops take over these drivers.. There are a few streets in NYC that a friend's company makes deliveries to. The cops know the delivery schedules, are make sure to be there on time, dropping off the ticket pretty much as the vehicle parks. One of the drivers confronted the ticketing cop once, only to be shrugged off with: "What do you care? You're not the one paying for it."

I'm glad to see this come as a service to the general public. There's some hope that with enough people fighting bogus tickets, someone will eventually get the message and stop handing them out so casually.

rgbrenner• 13 years ago

In fairness, are you sure they should be parking there if it's not a loading zone? I once was stuck behind a truck that refused to move on a one-lane street for 20 minutes while he insisted on unloading, backing up traffic 3 blocks down the street.

to3m• 13 years ago

I rather agree. When my daily commute involved driving through the city centre, it certainly seemed like the general public would be best served by not having things left parked where they shouldn't be! It was a rare day that didn't involve sitting in traffic for 5-10 minutes waiting for a rudely-parked van or lorry to be unloaded.

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

In midtown NYC, there are lots of narrow streets that have small businesses lining both sides of the street and cars parked on both sides of the street. The only way to deliver anything to these businesses would be to double park the truck. Making double parking illegal there is essentially outlawing commerce on these streets.

talmand2• 13 years ago

I would have to assume it was not a loading zone, if it were I find it doubtful they would be ticketed. I guess it depends on local ordinance, but from what I'm hearing this sounds like a justified ticket.

pkulak• 13 years ago

I think transport trucks have first right to streets (after emergency vehicles, of course). They pay a lot of taxes and it's the only way to get good delivered in cities. If commuters don't like waiting, they can always take transit or ride a bike.

awj• 13 years ago

If your drivers regularly park illegally no one is "taking advantage of your company" by showing up on schedule to issue a ticket. I'll acknowledge that bogus tickets might be a problem (that isn't my experience), but this example is hardly convincing.

ceejayoz5• 13 years ago

Yeah, it sounds a bit like complaining about the police stepping up patrols in a frequently robbed area to catch the culprits. That's their job.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Nice, I wonder if the second order effect of having a lot of tickets contested will feedback into the people writing them. Since it costs the system more to process a contested ticket, it is a loss for them to write them if they know they won't hold up.

bagels• 13 years ago

This is why I challenge every ticket.

They're often time just more taxes for things like parking 19 vs 18 inches from the curb, even in cases where no traffic (including cyclists) are impeded or endangered.

mindslight• 13 years ago

I'd be excited about this if instead of just sticking you with a reduced fine, they actually went after the city for the costs of defending against the errant ticket.

brady747• 13 years ago

Now if only there was a service that would auomatically ticket all the police, fire, government, etc. officials that park illegally.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

There needs to be a service just like this to fight towing companies.

At least where I live they tow people by the truckload from lots that aren't even marked as required by law, and then hold the vehicles hostage for ransom, though so far as I'm aware no law authorizes the theft.

LukeShu2• 13 years ago

I was once in an accident, and my car needed to be towed. The tow guy was supposed to take my car to where I specified; I gave him the address of a mechanic, and watched him write it down. Instead, he takes it to his company's lot, and doesn't tell anyone (including the police, who thought my car was delivered to the mechanic). Fought it, and didn't have to pay their ransom, but it was troubling having no idea where my car was for a few days until we figured it out.

triplesec3• 13 years ago

This piece is somewhat of a lazy PR-scripted journalism from TC (no surprise). Especially since the wording implies that Fixed will pay your ticket if they lose, which they won't: they'll just not charge you. You still have to pay the ticket. Which if it's erroneously issued you can fight yourself quite easily. Will Fixed go to second round arbitration, or challenege later in court if necessary? Because then it might be worth it for your time. Else, you're paying money (25%) for nothing.

skyebook• 13 years ago

It sounds like they go to court on your behalf.. If that's the case, then it makes financial sense for most to stay at work for the 1-2 hours and have someone else fight it. I'm not sure this would ever make sense if you're in a less populated jurisdiction where the courthouse is 5 minutes away and never has more than a few people inside, but for cities this seems like a legitimate convenience.

johnpowell• 13 years ago

I don't drive so I am totally clueless. But how much are parking tickets? Aren't they about 20 bucks? I don't think I would bother fighting over that.

And I didn't read the article because I don't click on links to techcrunch.

splat6• 13 years ago

It depends. In my city (a mid-sized city in the Midwest), being over the meter is a $25 ticket and that's the cheapest I've seen. Parking for too long in a 3-hr spot is $75. And if your car is towed it will be at least $125 to get it back (in addition to the parking ticket).

liuhenry• 13 years ago

In SF, the city this launched in, the parking ticket itself is typically $60-80 for something like running out of time on the meter. If you get towed because the time expired right before rush hour or someone thinks you're blocking their driveway, there's an additional towing fee of ~$500 on top of the ticket.

SeanLuke• 13 years ago

There’s an argument to be made that fighting parking tickets just takes money from the community.

There's no good argument along these lines. The social good of tickets is as a punitive measure to keep order. Tickets as a revenue mechanism is a social ill, full stop: it promotes the creation of bad law and corruption specifically designed to raise revenue. It's the same awfulness which results in speed traps, permanent toll roads, and red light or speeding cameras.

lostlogin3• 13 years ago

Agree with all the above except the red light camera thing. Running red lights has a non-zero risk of killing someone and while I can construct a scenario where my bad parking kills someone, its pretty unlikely.

ceejayoz5• 13 years ago

Running red lights has a non-zero risk of killing someone and while I can construct a scenario where my bad parking kills someone, its pretty unlikely.

Most of the folks getting red light tickets are getting them from rolling forwards at 1mph while they look for oncoming traffic, though.

parennoob3• 13 years ago

In which case someone running red lights should have their license to drive revoked to a certain extent, e.g. "run three red lights and you will lose your privilege to drive for five years." or something like that.

This will go far more towards curtailing people running red lights than the existing "pay $100 and go consequence-free" system.

toomuchtodo3• 13 years ago

Still waiting to see a red-light camera that physically stops the car from entering the intersection on red and killing someone.

If red light cameras were there for safety, they would ding your driving record, not just be monetary fines.

quanticle• 13 years ago

The problem with red light cameras that the OP is referring to is the fact that red-light cameras aren't pointed at the straight-through lanes, where running a red light would potentially cause a fatal T-bone accident. Instead, they're pointed at right turn lanes, where they're more likely to make money from people who didn't stop 100% when performing a right-on-red.

DannyBee• 13 years ago

Most red-light cameras (at least in the US) are outsourced, and they lower the yellow light times, sometimes dangerously below any reasonable measure.

http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/yellow-lights

This in turn has actually increased accidents. http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/studies

(i'm citing this mainly for the links, they are clearly a biased site).

DanBC2• 13 years ago

I have never quite understood the problem with speed traffic cameras. There's a problem if they're set too close to the speed limit for that road, but other than that they only catch people committing a criminal offence. The problem there is not the speed camera, it is either an inappropriate limit on a particular stretch of road or the speed limit law in total.

In England speed cameras have gone through a few weird changes. The first is that they must only be put up in accident blackspots. The second, following from the first, is that the cameras must be highly visible.

So now instead of grey cameras installed on many roads helping keep all drivers under the speed limit we have a few very visible cameras in known locations that many drivers can slow down for, but driving fast at all other times.

Frankly, anyone getting caught by a UK camera deserves the fine.

eigenvector3• 13 years ago

Opposition to speed-limit cameras exposes the absurdity of most speed-limit laws: it's a law so bad many (most?) people are opposed to having it strictly enforced. If that's not a bad law, then I don't know what is.

LukeShu2• 13 years ago

I have never quite understood the problem with speed traffic cameras.

Here are reasons that (if true) make a lot of sense. It sounds like where you live, the laws around them are very reasonable; for many people that's not the case.

I don't have sources for these claims, I'm only repeating what I've heard/read, since you asked. I don't have real feelings about them either way, as we don't have them where I live.

- Red-light cameras actually increase accidents and injuries. More people slam on the breaks to avoid tripping them, instead of being slightly past the stop bar or entering when the light is yellow.

- When they are hidden (as many are), they do not effectively slow people down; they don't make the roads safer.

- As conditioning for future behavior, they are ineffective; studies show that when the punishment is after the misbehavior, the mind doesn't link the two together as well.

poulsbohemian• 13 years ago

Your milage may vary depending on local laws, etc.

Disclaimer: I don't live in Seattle any longer so the situation I am about to describe may have changed in recent years (but I doubt it).

Story: There's a 5-way intersection near the University of Washington campus. The city put up cameras and started collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in fines. Problem: city ordinance stated something like any ticket resulting from a photo must come from a camera mounted at a 90 degree angle to the street. Notice the bit about it being a 5-way intersection? None of the roads came together at a 90 degree angle. Point was, the city continued to violate their own ordinance for years because that single intersection was a cash cow - the whole system was automated so the pictures were taken, cars identified, tickets mailed. THAT is why there is so much outrage about cameras in the US - it's the Man kicking us around.

stinkytaco10• 13 years ago

Tickets as a revenue mechanism is a social ill, full stop

I never buy an argument that is so simple. Tickets are a revenue source and that keeps taxes lower on the backs of people who flaunt the law. If the alternative is New York where parking is such a cluster it's an impediment to business, I think I might take the corruption. It's a far more nuanced problem than you're making it.

Political oversight of revenue sources is necessary, yes, but to say they are an unmitigated bad is to be ignorant of most local budget processes.

bitwalker• 13 years ago

Tickets being a revenue source because some people value the convenience of parking illegally over the cost of the ticket is one thing. Tickets being given deliberately as a means of increasing revenue is another.

I've been given tickets for parking illegally when I was parked in my own residential parking lot, while displaying the required parking tag on my dash. It was done deliberately in the off chance that I might be too lazy to fight it. It's that kind of blatant disregard for the spirit of the law that they are arguing against, not tickets being a source of revenue in the more general sense. Granted, I'm not them, so maybe they were - but that was what my impression was from their comment.

awjr• 13 years ago

Aberystwyth (UK) had a weird year where they had no parking officers. Apparently caused complete parking chaos. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-18267009

scarmig2• 13 years ago

Political oversight is the issue: to supply revenue, a politician is given a choice, between raising taxes and issuing more fines. Raising taxes is always a difficult battle, while jaywalkers or people who speed on the highway make a convenient target. So the latter happens more than it should.

These tickets disproportionately target the poor, who have the hardest time paying them on short notice, leading to additional fines that accumulate and build on each other. So officials are incentivized to either game the system by doling out tickets more than is socially productive or by targeting people who are most likely to pay back the most in fines.

The revenue has to go somewhere, but it absolutely should not go into the pockets of the agency issuing the fines. Where should it go? Best case would be to reimburse the people harmed by the social ill that's being fined: that level of targeting is hard, leaning toward impossible. Next best is to give everyone an equal share of the fines: this is also difficult, and overly costly for what would amount to a couple bucks. Third best would be to have it go into the government's general fund, to the exclusion of the agency issuing the fines. Fourth best would be going straight to the general fund.

Second worst is giving it to the agency issuing the tickets, which is where we're at now. Worst of all would be allowing the officers issuing the fine to pocket it themselves, which leads to the lowest levels of ability to audit and the most perverse and misaligned incentives.

Zigurd3• 13 years ago

on the... people who flaunt [sic] the law

That's only correct if you believe parking fines are fairly administered.

If not, they are in fact a social ill.

josephlord• 13 years ago

Sorry to be picky on language but I think this misuse may be spreading and this comment is pretty high.

You 'flout' the laws and you 'flaunt' your ridiculous good looks.

dvanduzer• 13 years ago

The social good of parking tickets involves the supply and demand of a constrained resource in dense urban areas. This is quite different than the deterrent aspects of a speeding ticket.

Tickets as a revenue mechanism is a social ill because it's usually a regressive tax in practice. Most people don't seem to have a problem with "luxury tax"-style revenue generation.

Do you have a negative view of "permanent toll roads" because it happens to be regressive since poor people often have to drive, even though it's a more usage-based tax?

tyoma• 13 years ago

A cool idea, but cash-strapped local governments will find ways to get around this if it ever becomes popular. There are already jurisdictions where you have to pay your ticket before you can appeal it, and others where appeals cost money.

virtualwhys• 13 years ago

Snow emergency tickets are perhaps an order of magnitude worse that your standard parking ticket because not only do you have to pay a hefty fine (AFAIK, not possible to contest), but also have to deal with the fact that you have no car until you pay through the nose to the mobster tow yard as well.

True story: it was the first night of the so called snow emergency (that never came). I was awoken to the sound of a tow truck at 3AM. Running outside (in my underwear) I yelled at the driver, WTF are you doing? There's no snow! He laughed and drove off with my car.

Went to the tow yard the next day and paid the ridiculous fine to get my car back. Pissed off, but whatever, move on.

The next night, same deal, no snow, but the car is towed again! This time, enraged, I walked down to the tow yard (30 minutes away); waited for the right moment (when one of the tow trucks was pulling out to go tow another car), jumped in my car, gunned the engine, and hauled ass out of the yard...and back to my place in the same dry parking spot -- total coup d'etat.

Nothing happened, tow yard probably didn't even know they had my car in the first place.

Moral of the story: ignore reality (i.e. the weather), if the state declares a snow emergency, find off street parking.

mathattack• 13 years ago

If cities complain about Uber and AirBnB, I can't imagine them not raising hell about this. Even if it's perfectly legal, cities will fight like rabid wolverines to protect their revenue sources, especially ones that they don't have to refer to as a dreaded "tax".

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

On a completely unrelated note - did anyone else notice this:

Here’s some more startups that can make your life easier: Wash.io – On-Demand, Door-To-Door Laundry And Dry Cleaning | Homejoy – On-Demand House Cleaning

Two plugs for startups that have nothing to do with parking?

blisterpeanuts• 13 years ago

I wish this app had existed 3 years ago, when my sushi lunch in Arlington, Mass., cost me an extra $50 because my car was parked "in excess of 6 inches from the curb". My wife has gotten several citations in that town, as well, for slightly exceeding the 2 hour (non-metered) limit on free parallel parking in the commercial district. You'd almost think they're trying to drive away business.

FireBeyond• 13 years ago

My favorite is when they do this next to high curbs (often in historic districts) - "if I parked closer to the curb it'd be impossible to get out because the bottom of my door would hit the curb".

moovmoov• 13 years ago

Great service to the public . Kudos to the designer

Zigurd3• 13 years ago

Regarding the argument over whether parking ticket revenues are fairly obtained, stinkytaco and others claiming they are fair and legitimate should address the fact that everyone reading this understands what it means to get a ticket "fixed."

There would not be a word for it if that form of corruption wasn't endemic.

Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

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