Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 139 posts

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#81

Post by eli »

splat wrote: post #71
eli wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that, but there have been complaints in some jurisdictions that it creates an incentive to shorten yellow lights, thus catching people who barely missed getting through the intersection in time. To me, just missing a yellow light feels like a far less serious crime than blowing a light that has been red for a while, but I guess the real issue there is the yellow light is timed incorrectly.

It all depends. What if it's three o'clock in the morning and you've been waiting at a light for five minutes and its not turning and you can see that no one's coming in the other direction?

Yeah, sorry, I still don't think that's OK. There may be reasons for running a red light, but "it's late and I'm impatient" isn't one of them.

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#82

Post by joelrunyon »

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?

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#83

Post by toomuchtodo »

grecy wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If red light cameras were there for safety, they would ding your driving record, not just be monetary fines. In lots of countries, they do.

In the US, they rarely do:

http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/auto_enforce.html

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#84

Post by skyebook »

triplesec wrote: post #41

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…

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.

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#85

Post by bitwalker »

stinkytaco wrote: post #61
SeanLuke wrote: post #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, perma…

>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 s…

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.

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#86

Post by awjr »

stinkytaco wrote: post #61
SeanLuke wrote: post #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, perma…

>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 s…

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

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#87

Post by dvanduzer »

SeanLuke wrote: post #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, perma…

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?

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#88

Post by eli »

cobrausn wrote: post #72
eli wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that, but there have been complaints in some jurisdictions that it creates an incentive to shorten yellow lights, thus catching people who barely missed getting through the intersection in time. To me, just missing a yellow light feels like a far less serious crime than blowing a light that has been red for a while, but I guess the real issue there is the yellow light is timed incorrectly.

http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shorteni... Not only does it create the incentive to shorten the red light, it's practically the only way to make them profitable for cities in many places.

I agree that it adds an incentive, but I don't think it's literally the only way to make them profitable. And not every city necessarily cares that they are profitable.

In Northern VA they increased the yellow light time on intersections with red light cameras specifically because they only want to catch "genuine" red light runners.

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#89

Post by dangrossman »

stinkytaco wrote: post #70
dangrossman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to avoid being ticketed by an incompetent/corrupt parking authority by simply not living in the city they're employed in. You can even keep that up for millennia ! That doesn't mean they never give out unjust tickets to the people that do live there.

It's also easy to chalk up thousands of perfectly legitimate parking tickets to a few incompetent/corrupt parking authorities that you have no evidence exist except anecdotal experiences. I’ve now read a half a dozen comments in this thread that I can sum up as "I once got a parking ticket that I shouldn't have, all parking authorities are incompetent and corrupt." No one's telling you that you shouldn't be allowed t…

> No one's telling you that you shouldn't be allowed to challenge a ticket

I think that's exactly what the person I responded to was saying. If obeying the law never results in being issued a ticket, there's no reason they should allow tickets to be challenged.

Re: Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

#90

Post by rhino369 »

joeframbach wrote: post #3
rdp wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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.

Post reply on HN