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DoNotPay Bot Has Beaten 160,000 Traffic Tickets -- and Counting (venturebeat.com)
Khari Johnson, writing for VentureBeat:A bot made to challenge traffic tickets has been used more than 9,000 times by New Yorkers, according to DoNotPay maker Joshua Browder. The bot was made available to New Yorkers in March. In recent years and decades, residents of The Big Apple have seen a persistent increase in traffic fines. A record $1.9 billion in traffic fines was issued by the City of New York in 2015. Since the first version of the bot was released in London last fall, 160,000 of 250,000 tickets have been successfully challenged with DoNotPay, Browder said. "I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society," said Browder. "These people aren't looking to break the law. I think they're being exploited as a revenue source by the local government." Browder, who's 19, hopes to extend DoNotPay to Seattle this fall.
my bro got nailed by a red light camera in Fremont, CA. the actual fine was two franklins plus change. Other "assorted fees" cause the entire bill to balloon to just under six franklins.
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Sorry to ruin your tirade but not all parking tickets are because somebody broke a traffic law. I've gotten one in my life. I parked in the spot where a cop normally parked when he was going to visit the woman he was having an affair with. I parked my legal vehicle on a street which street parking was permitted. My crime was I made him park across the street. It was in front of my own house for christ sake. Still had to go fight it all because I dared to slightly inconvenience a cop.
When there are legitimate reasons that you shouldn't have to pay the ticket, in my experience it requires no more than a simple presentation of those reasons to city hall. where the ticket would be paid, and the penalty is always dropped entirely.
The only time I have ever seen people have to pay for parking tickets is when they actually deserved them and reasonably could have known better, but either forgetfulness or simple laziness led to the situation where they ended up getting one.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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NYC meter maids would never, ever, EVER write bogus tickets. The only reason the NYPD started using the handheld ticket machine was to try to cut down on the number of tickets that were thrown out because they were questionable or obviously bogus. It was an attempt to keep them honest (so the city would get more money). When I moved to NYC my truck was ticketed so often for being a "commercial" vehicle (despite not meeting any of the requirements) that I ended up selling it because fighting every single ticket wasn't worth the hassle. Most of the city employees are good, hard working people but there are enough corrupt ones to screw with a lot of people.