Use Your iPhone To Get Out of a Ticket
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Parkingticket.com just announced new compatibility with the Safari web browser on Apple's iPhone, giving you new tools to immediately contest a parking ticket. The site is so confident in their service that if all steps are followed and the ticket is still not dismissed they will pay $10 towards your ticket. "The process begins by navigating the iPhone's Safari browser to the Parkingticket.com website where you'll find a straightforward means to fight a parking ticket; whether the ticket was issued in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. Simply register for a free account and choose the city in which the ticket was issued. Enter your ticket and vehicle details then answer a few quick questions. The detailed process takes about ten minutes, from A-Z. To allow easy entry of your ticket, a look-a-like parking ticket is displayed — for your specific city — with interactive functionality."
I think the iPhone just became a positive ROI for many people in these areas.
How exactly will you fight a legit ticket?
Will its wonders never cease!
Will we see this on A&E parking wars?
Wait, I think I saw this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup.com
davejenkins.com |
Is this an ad or something?
Unless they are willing to pay the entire fine, then their service free or fee based is worth nothing.
There are many snake-oil security systems out there that claim to be perfect without any problems and with a guarantee to refund some percentage of the cost of the system in the event of a break-in. I say they if they're not willing to stand-by their product and pay the full amount of the system + any and all costs associated with the breach, then they are not worth the trouble.
Ever watched "Parking Wars" on TV and looked at how people park? Most people probably deserve the ticket anyway :(
Simply register for a free account and choose the city in which the ticket was issued. Enter your ticket and vehicle details then answer a few quick questions.
I thought there is nothing free in this world especially the USA...or is there? OK tell me. What is in it for Parkingticket.com? Where is the catch?
Parking tickets should be backed up with photographs anyways, taken by the ticket-writer.
If the photos should be sent with the ticket. If they aren't proof of an offense, it should be dismissed.
Tickets for parking too long in one spot should be accompanied by proof that you did exceed the time, including photos showing the wheels in the same position at the start time and stop time.
Unused photos should be destroyed as soon as practical, within hours of the end of the person's shift at the latest.
Of course, no city wants to go to that kind of effort.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Doesn't look like anything special.. just an automated ambulance-chasing service. They get 50% of the price of the ticket by filing some forms to contest it. There must be a low conviction rate for parking tickets (or people who fight them), and they're just taking advantage of that fact. To top it all off, they get all of your personal information, including the make, model, and plate numbers of your vehicle. I'm not sure whether an attorney-client relationship would exist in this scenario, but even if it did, they could probably resell anonymized information.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Wouldn't any phone with a camera and internet access do? Why does it have to be an iPhone? What about a laptop and digital camera?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Those sites and processes only work if you are willing to appeal the judges decision and go through the effort. Plan on the judge looking at you and saying "guilty" in court--they know it's a matter of numbers and most people will just pay the ticket and go about their business. The sites are more of a rip-off than just paying the darned things.
Trust me on this--I've tried.
Peace!
So basically, this site has nothing whatsoever to do with the iPhone except actually working on the browser. The screenshot shows that's it not even an iPhone-specific page.
-mkb
What about this scenario?
$30.00 parking ticket.
deposit $15.00.
The ticket gets reduced to $25.00.
They refund $7.50, but you've still paid them $7.50.
You're out $32.50, more than the original ticket.
This happens in every case where the ticket is reduced less than 25%. They need to address this.
Still, I like the idea in general.
The summary doesn't make this completely clear and the website only reveals this in a FAQ section, but this is ONLY available for tickets written in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I thought /. had human editors. I guess I was mistaken.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Parkingticket.com just announced new compatibility with the Safari web browser on Apple's iPhone, giving you new tools to immediately contest a parking ticket. The site is so confident in their service that if all steps are followed and the ticket is still not dismissed they will pay $10 towards your ticket.
I live in Washington state, where it's illegal to use a hand-held phone while driving. If I'm trying to immediately contest a ticket and get pulled over for using a phone while driving, will parkingticket.com automatically contest that one as well? Otherwise it's gonna be a vicious circle.
#DeleteChrome
Wouldn't it be easier to just obey parking laws?
Fees for my services are quite high at $10,000 / baby, but what value can you put on having your perfect designer family ? If your baby is born of the 'wrong' sex, I will not only refund the entire $10,000, but will give you an extra $5,000 by way of compensation. It's win-win, I tell you !
Now, where's my first customer ?
(Thanks to Richard Dawkins for putting me onto this wonderful line of business.)
Squirrel!
In my old apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC, there was a sign that said you could not park beyond that sign. If you assumed that you could park on the OTHER side of the sign, you would be wrong. The other side of the sign was a cross walk.
Half a block from that spot, there is another sign indicating where you can and cannot park. If you park where the sign indicates it is legal, you will get a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant. My friend took photos showing that the sign itself was 9 feet from the hydrant. He went to court in person. The judge said it doesn't matter where the sign is, the law says you have to be 10 feet from the hydrant.
The Washington Post has a column called Dr. Gridlock. I recall a few years back where they ran stories of tickets in DC. One person got a ticket for parking at an expired meter. He appealed by mail (which you can't even do anymore) and included a photograph showing that there were, in fact, no parking meters on the street where he was parked. His appeal was denied.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
In the State of Michigan (and probably several other states), you can get out of a parking ticket for a handicap parking space if the sign is not properly placed or affixed in front of the parking space: the sign must be in front of (not next to) the center of the parking space, directly facing the parking space, must be of a minimum size, uniform colors and appearance, must be 84 inches off the ground, etc. If it fails to meet ANY of the criteria, take a photo of it (with your iPhone if it makes you feel better ;), take it into court and your ticket will be dismissed immediately upon showing the photo to the magistrate. And, NO, blue lines on the parking space ARE NOT adequate.
Ditto in the state of Florida. The handicap parking sign MUST conform to F.S. 553.5041. If it's not duly marked or does not conform to 553.5041, it is not a legal handicap space and you are under no legal obligation whatsoever to observe it as such.
IANAL. Hire an attorney if you want real legal advice to get you out of your parking ticket.
Also, I can't verify, but I've been told that in Royal Oak, Michigan, if you've never received another parking violation, you can challenge it in court they will drop it, first time only though.
My blog
Use Your IPhone To Get Out Of A Parking Ticket
After all, some people get ticketed for other things that they would like to be able to get out of. If an iPhone could get me out of a speeding ticket I would buy one today.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Meaning, that the lottery relies on the poor math skills of most people. In this case, it's relying on the lack of common sense of most people, same way that sites like "freecreditreport.com" (which is just trying to sell you a service). If you can contest the ticket all by yourself and get it reduced, then do so. Wouldn't be surprised if they're actually selling people's personal information on the side (which would be how they REALLY make their money).
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
You think there's only ONE troll on all of slashdot?
That's cute. You're cute.
There are websites devoted to trolling slashdot.
can be accepted by the court as evidence supporting the alleged act
as evidence, not as guilty because a ticket was written. In these cases the witness cannot be expected to remember a single detail other than "I don't write tickets unless they are guilty" same with officers on speeding, etc. The statements in court will always be more of a "this is what typically happens." Not a single detail not written down is really about your incident. Good luck getting them to admit it in court though.
you're always free to take your own photographs
Good luck with that, the chances of them being allowed are essentially zilch. All the fair trail of peers, etc, etc don't apply since they don't rise to depriving you of liberty stance, only depriving you of a few green backs (or a state issued permit, but driving is not yet considered a right that a fair trial is needed for.) My experience in traffic type courts: evidence, trial, etc is just a stagged act to make those involved feel good, with a lawyer you get the "friend of the court" rate. without you get the standard rate. All other evidence is a meaningless show.
Go to the website, take pictures, how is this specific to the iphone? Any web enabled phone with a camera can do this. Then again if you over paid for your phone & service you're probably more likely to overpay your parking fine reductions.
Slavery & Convenience too!
Seriously, this has absolutely nothing in particular to do with that device.
What's next, Use Your IPhone [sic] To Make Phone Calls? Use Your IPhone [sic] As A Paperweight?
While this is probably great if most of the parking is city owned and the meter readers are ticket happy (Miami, perhaps?), us suburban dwellers have an entirely worse problem if we accidentially park somewhere we're not supposed to - the vehicle will be towed. And if you think parking tickets are sneaky, you haven't experienced how frustrating it is to have your car towed because you didn't see that "Tow Away Zone" sign that was behind a shrub, underneath a street light with a burned out bulb.
At that point, an iPhone becomes no more helpful than a free Nokia. You'll be calling a friend or a cab for a ride to the towing company to get your car back. Course, I am not dissing the iPhone here - I have one myself. But seriously, we get it, it has a decent web browser. It's not newsworthy every time someone discovers they can order pizza on their iPhone, buy stuff on eBay or find out while they're in the store that Amazon is still selling plasma TVs for cheaper than Circuit City's going-out-of-business prices.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Apparently you nay sayers don't live in San Francisco, where parking tickets range between $45-$90 and are super easy to get (poor signage, weird rules at certain hours on certain streets, etc). The best part about these completely over-priced penalties is that they are damn near impossible to get out of, and the city can even repo your car and hold it hostage if you do not pay the fine. I would gladly pay $22-$45 to get out of the ticket, if that is what it came down to, though I doubt that the situation is as dire in other major cities.
hey officer, I was speeding becasue I saw you drop this shinny iPhone...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You pay sales tax when you get a SCUBA tank filled. So air isn't exactly free when you live underwater.
Ever had to park in a big city, or on a college campus? While I believe that parking laws are important in general, I'm convinced that sometimes certain laws exist purely as a revenue source. Even the most cautious person is going to make a mistake at some point, no matter how carefully they try to understand and follow the rules.
Re-read the story. The news is simply that its site is now compatible with Safari on the iphone. After that, its just marketing fluff. You also could go home and use IE or Mozilla (or probably Netscape for that matter, hehe) to do the same thing.
Not quite understanding the purpose behind this application. After all, the perpetrator who illegally parked their car is admitting quilt, just that they want to pay less to the government. This is what is wrong with this country in the first place. Folks are too selfish as it is, don't they realize the benefit that comes from transferring their money to the government? It is proven that that money spent by the government returns more value to society then any other type of potential spending. The sooner we all buck up and pay government it's fair share -- the sooner the economy will pick up, providing benefit to all folks in the most equitable manner possible.
People who want to park their cars for free are pathetic whiners. Cars cost our society an enormous amount. Why shouldn't the individual using the car pay for some of the car's costs?
That said, I did get in illegitimate parking ticket once (parked under a sign with restriction hours posted on it, outside the restriction hours). They dismissed it, eventually.
But I suspect that the overwhelming majority of parking tickets are perfectly legitimate and completely deserved.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
This must be the Open Source "we" I have heard about.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The clip is long, but worth it. Never seen the show before but I'm tempted to start watching. That was classic.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
"a look-a-like parking ticket is displayed - for your specific city"
Does this mean I can use the service to print up fake parking tickets and use them to annoy the hell out of my neighbors?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Err, are you asking if all of these copypasta trolls come from the same person? Or are you asking if all Anonymous Coward posts come from the same person? I guess either one is pretty laughable. Welcome to the internet, my friend.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Who needs a web site? Weasel out of your tickets the old fashioned way, with Photoshop and a $30 printer!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Err, are you asking if all of these copypasta trolls come from the same person? Or are you asking if all Anonymous Coward posts come from the same person? I guess either one is pretty laughable. Welcome to the internet, my friend.
Does it matter? How hard would it be to set up an auto-rejection filter for this?
Where post text CONTAINS "Nigger" OR "GNAA" AND Anonymous Coward is TRUE then BAN, EXIT.
That's just not slashdot's style. AFAIK there has only been one post removed from slashdot... ever. The only reason THAT one went is because the Scientologists brought out the lawyer guns.
I could be wrong, but that's what I remember of my slashdot history.
...Because that is Censorship, something that /. is opposed to. Sure, it might be annoying having to read all these posts, but they get modded troll, offtopic or flamebait quickly enough.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Assuming it's possible to tell which spaces are handicapped spaces. Blue lines on the pavement aren't even visible for half the year.
I don't like any form of hate speech... but I like censorship even less
take my view to be whatever you will
I do wonder if you would vote for a law that would punish a person for using said word on the street... I mean people by far and large are anonymous in large public places. just wondering, that's all.
then again, why stop at just that one word?
you can guess where this is going, and so I will stop here.
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
We also would have accepted: Jesse Jackson
/. just hit a new low. Goodbye.
Remember bitchslap.pl ?
Taco doesn't have to ban/delete a post for it to be hardly ever seen.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Nannerpuss!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I believe there was another one, containing Microsoft source code.
Then they'd just misspell words like spammers do, to avoid the filter. And do more annoying things, like sticking that in the middle of a real post they cut & pasted from some other thread.
No filter can get around this sort of thing because the trolls would just keep trying until they figured out what it didn't like. It's like watermarks - if there's a way to check for them there's a way to check if you've properly removed them.
For about 250 Euro you can rent yourself a spot per month; which is half of a house-rent.
Instead of creating more possibilities for the people living in town, they scrap parking spots and write up more!
Without any consideration of living in that area while dropping off groceries with the car...
The only hours you might be able to find a parking spot without driving around for 20 minutes is not on fridays & saturdays and at night (around 1:30-5:00).
As cherry on top, some cops are REALLY blind when they NEED to see the Antwerp citizen parking card; creating unwanted fines and court cases by the dozens. I'm glad they've been commercializing Antwerpen-Parking because these people seem to be atleast looking to the presence of that card... mostly ... that is ;)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
> by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27, @08:16PM (#27015381)
How.. fitting :)
I didn't have a parking pass yet, so I parked along a street where at least a dozen other cars were parked. Came out to find a ticket for having my car in a no parking zone. There were no signs to that effect, but the curb was painted yellow. However, this was in January, and the curb was completely covered with snow. Pretty lame to expect people to follow the rules when there's no practical way for them to know what the rules are.
Hmmm, perhaps a few more than one.
I entirely agree. I'm scratching my head wondering what the story is here - they have a website, which is compatible with the Iphone's web browser (*gasp* a website compatible with a web browser? What a stunning achievement!) and therefore this is newsworthy, I guess because they're riding of the hype that "doing X on the Iphone" is automatically seen as newsworthy.
There's no story here. The only link is to the website itself - pure spam. The website itself just reads like a spam email. And it's doubly spam, because it's yet more free advertising for the Iphone, for a feature that phones have had for years. This isn't about some new Iphone only application, it's about navigating to the fucking website.
Normally I'd check to see if my years old phone can also reach the website, and ask if there's going to be a "Use Your Motorola V980 To Get Out of a Ticket", but in this case, I think it's best we see as little spam from this company as possible.
Next time I'm submitting a story to Slashdot, I know how to make sure it gets accepted - just point out how your can use your IpHoNe to read the link that I'm submitting, and all the Iphone fans will, it seems, mod it up.
Doesn't anyone take responsibility for their own actions any more? That is what is corrupting the USA. If you are dumb enough to get a parking ticket, pay it and MOVE ON! You don't have to like, but it is nobody's fault but your own... Just my opinion!
That does seem to be the case, but it also seems that there have been lawyers involved every time too.
I still stand by the spirit of my post, that it's just not slashdot's style to remove posts, even offensive ones.
You realize you're heavily into Ninnle Linux territory...
I believe there was another one, containing Microsoft source code.
Posting viruses is fair grounds for deleting. :)
Pay the goddamned ticket because you committed a civil offense. Or do you not believe that someone should face consequences when they break the law?
Did you just realize you're not a good person? Does it hurt? It will stop.
As someone who rarely watches cop shows, and watches little TV in general, I can totally recommend The Wire. It's finished now, but there's sixty episodes across five seasons. I'm about half way through, and it's compulsive viewing - grittier than the average police drama, with far more believable characters.