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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.
What's higher than first-world problems?
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.
I get a note saying "parking fine".
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Right, using technology to get the upper hand in civil matters as bad bad bad. Unless the government is doing to make money off of citizens, in that case, it
ay-oh-kay!
BACK IN LINE CITIZEN! You will pay whatever fine we choose to levy against you.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
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.
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.
Politics in the English-speaking world is just devolving into a long winded bunch of mad rants.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The bot helps a person decide if the reasons they have are "legitimate", and it gives some pointers on what evidence to bring if you decide to challenge. I don't understand why you think that's useless.
So your saying automating my response to automated traffic tickets is a bad thing? I'm instead supposed to expend my resources to pay a lawyer and/or suspend my own resource generation method to attend traffic court in my own defense of said automatically generated traffic fines?
This guy found a useful and novel use of technology for citizens to defend themselves in direct response to another useful and novel use of a technology by government to extract revenue from its citizens.
It is driving commerce by the income its generating its creator, its helping helping our keepers by forcing them to do their jobs the way the people have outlined for them, and its helping citizens by providing a defense that does not cost an entire days time.
Of course this may create a group of people undeterred by UNJUST or MISHANDLED traffic fines, but that's supposed to be all of us anyway. That's the point of the whole thing to begin with. If the fine is deserving (within the bounds of the law, backed up by the eye-witness account of the COMPLETELY TRUSTWORTHY LEO, filed in triplicate ect) I'm sure it will stick, regardless of the use of the automated system this dude/dudette has created.
This is not going to make people "drive like maniacs", there are still plenty of incentives to not be an asshole, such as staying alive, keeping my expensive car pretty, not being pulled over, and the general desire to not be an asshole.
Of course there are and always will be assholes on the road though, so if you REALLY want to you can point and say SEE! SEE! the computers made em do it!! I bet you can't guess what happens after that. HINT- GOVERNMENTS HATE COMPETITION.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Ok, I read TFA, sue me. Sounds like the bot is just looking for technicalities that will void the ticket. Fair enough.Have you ever heard of a corporation that avoided some tax based on a technicality? I could think of a few.
Better yet. Ever have a cop give you a ticket based on a technicality? I have.
Technicalities are not reserved for use by only one side. They are fair game to all. Seems to me that this one is just making these technicalities available to all. Fair enough.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Doesn't look like a bazillion conditions to me.... I've only once seen somebody get a ticket where one of those was applicable, and the fine was waived as soon as they went to city hall tell them. Most of the time, a parking ticket is given because somebody wasn't paying enough attention to the time and how it impacted where they were parked.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I think the bot is asking you whether or not you could possibly fabricate evidence, or at least a story that can't be refuted, that one of those things are true.
Oh bullshit. There's nothing "truly intelligent" about backing people like Trump or Jeremy Corbyn. It's pure gut-level reactionarism. As to the will of the people of the UK, it was mad attack against Westminster which will do nothing but damage the fortunes of Britain, likely leading to the loss of Scotland, and maybe Northern Ireland in the process. It was stupidity of the highest degree and ably demonstrates the US Founding Fathers' deep distrust of unimpeded democracy.
For fuck's sakes, within a few days over a million people, basically the margin by which Leave won, regretted their decision.
So however you try to justify these attacks on the "establishment" (by which one generally means the intricate balancing of interests and powers that allows governments and societies to actually function), "intelligent" simply is not a valid description. Pettiness, arrogance and stupidity are the words I would use to describe it; large numbers of cranky, ignorant people lashing out without understanding and totally fucking themselves up in the process.
At least in the US it looks like Trump is doomed, which ought to forever end the British view of American politics as some sort of chaotic free-for-all. The colonies really have figured out how to suppress the lunacy of the mob
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You know how I know you didn't RTFA?
Truth to a US "liberal" is as salt to a slug. (See my sig)
I read your sig and it's stupid. You're one of those very silly people who sees world in black and white terms cheering on your "team" and having a nice 2 minutes hate for the other team. Try actually engaging your brain and thinking independently for a change.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yeah the "most vulnerable people" part is bullshit.
But, traffic violation tickets are a scam. Over here, it usually takes weeks, sometimes a month or two, until you get the letter. Where it basically gives you the opportunity to pay or write back with a statement. That delay is either gross incompetence or intentional, because yeah, sure I know exactly what I was doing when I was driving some road I already forgot six weeks ago. I can definitely swear under oath that I was not doing over the speed limit. I definitely remember all the parking signs that were nearby and can tell you absolutely surely where exactly I was parking.
Of course I can't. So every sane person avoids the risk, pays the small fine and gets on with their lives. But you know what? Every single time where I actually could remember the details or had by pure chance taken a picture that I could use, every single time that I fought the ticket, I won.
Of course sometimes I park illegally, I live in the center of a city, when I want to park in front of my house to carry up or down something heavy, I pretty much don't have a choice. But there are some tickets where I'm not sure, because I don't have OCD and I don't take a picture of my car every time I'm parked somewhere.
Cops should have to provide photographic evidence the same way they do for speeding tickets. It's not difficult these days to give them a small camera. In fact, for many other reasons cops should anyway have a camera on them. They should prove what they claim I did. The whole "cop saw you and he counts as a witness" is a setup if due to these artificial delays and life being life you have almost no chance to counter their claims.
The whole "pay this small fine and we'll forget about it" is a protection money racket. Give proper fines without all this trickery and deceit. Why is my "we'll forget about it" money ten bucks, but if I dare to go to court you will raise the ticket price? No? Court costs, sure, that is my risk. But suddenly the parking ticket becomes more expensive because I decide to fight it? That's extortion, plain and simple.
So, end of rant - you can see why a lot of people feel that parking tickets are unfair. Not by their nature, but by the way they are handled. And that's why people love something that gives them a chance to fight the perceived injustice.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In some places traffic laws are used to prey on the poor and vulnerable. For example, by setting unreasonably short timings at traffic lights you can increase the number of red light tickets, and if the area is poor then the citizens are less able to investigate and fight back.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What is the deal with this dichotomy between "the evil government" and you or me? Do you have a better method for wrangling the cats of many competing viewpoints in an ordered society? And yes, using technology to gain the upper hand in civil matters can be a bad thing. If you have traffic fines to deter people from driving in a way that is inconvenient or dangerous for others, and then a few technologically savvy people figure out how to avoid those fines, all you are going to create is a group of people who are undeterred by traffic fines and drive like maniacs. Ideally there would be a process for appealing unjustified citations (which there is), but the solution is not just to circumvent the whole system unless you think the laws are fine for everyone except you.
but but but... sometimes my side loses in an election, and this is clearly tyranny and Shall Not Stand.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
What is the deal with every startup or tech company or whatever trying to take the moral high ground on whatever they happen to have found some marketable niche for? "...The most vulnerable people in society"? Give me a fucking break.
Back at you. It is as they say. Our car was towed in San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it was $500 to get it out. Did you get that? $500. Imagine someone working for $18/hour (sarcasm obvious), and needing that car to get to work. Hell, the car might not be WORTH more than $500. There was a couple crying at the pound in that exact situation. That was one of the most depressing and infuriating moments of my life.
once again decades ago, the local paper ran an expose of the local towing scheme; the city had a contract with one tow company who would haul the car to a yard way the hell out of town in a shady area, and demanded cash only to release the vehicle. no atm anywhere near, of course.
naturally a couple of years later, another expose of the corrupt deals the tow company was making with a lot of cops, with kickbacks, people being towed while legally parked, etc. etc. etc.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I think you are underestimating how devastating invalid parking tickets can be. I like John Oliver's take https://www.youtube.com/watch?...