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.
Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
41–50 of 139 posts
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#42I'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, t…
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.
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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like something that the businesses of that street should be addressing with the local government to get that obvious problem resolved. Such as a loading zone that doesn't allow general parking during certain hours. Yes, it's not optimal but it's better than the ticket and causing traffic problems.
Yes, they should address it with local government and I'm sure they do. However, that's not a perfectly effecient system either. There's often one or two vocal citizens that can obstruct the process for small businesses. Just to be clear, I don't feel governments should favor small businesses over residential or vice versa, but just that complaining to local government means getting politics involved. The other issue…
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Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#44I 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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#45> 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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#46I hate parking tickets so much that I follow posted signs and obey traffic laws.
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 p…
> 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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#47> 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, perma…
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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#48I hate parking tickets so much that I follow posted signs and obey traffic laws.
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 p…
"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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#49I hate parking tickets so much that I follow posted signs and obey traffic laws.
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 p…
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.
Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That sounds like something that the businesses of that street should be addressing with the local government to get that obvious problem resolved. Such as a loading zone that doesn't allow general parking during certain hours. Yes, it's not optimal but it's better than the ticket and causing traffic problems.
In Tokyo, trucks are only allowed to unload during the nighttime. The Japanese attitude toward government regulation (and staying up late for social obligations, etc) is quite different, for better or for worse.