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Hate Parking Tickets? Fixed Fights Them In Court For You

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

#71

Post by splat »

eli wrote: post #64
ceejayoz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Most of the folks getting red light tickets are getting them from rolling forwards at 1mph while they look for oncoming traffic, though.

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?

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

#72

Post by cobrausn »

eli wrote: post #64
ceejayoz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Most of the folks getting red light tickets are getting them from rolling forwards at 1mph while they look for oncoming traffic, though.

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.

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

#73

Post by eigenvector »

DanBC wrote: post #54
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…

I have never quite understood the problem with speed traffic cameras. There's a problem if they're set too close to the speed limit for that road, but other than that they only catch people committing a criminal offence. The problem there is not the speed camera, it is either an inappropriate limit on a particular stretch of road or the speed limit law in total. In England speed cameras have gone through a few weird…

Opposition to speed-limit cameras exposes the absurdity of most speed-limit laws: it's a law so bad many (most?) people are opposed to having it strictly enforced. If that's not a bad law, then I don't know what is.

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

#74

Post by splat »

johnpowell wrote: post #44

I 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.

It depends. In my city (a mid-sized city in the Midwest), being over the meter is a $25 ticket and that's the cheapest I've seen. Parking for too long in a 3-hr spot is $75. And if your car is towed it will be at least $125 to get it back (in addition to the parking ticket).

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

#75

Post by grecy »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #57
lostlogin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#76

Post by eli »

parennoob wrote: post #67
eli wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a red light is a moving violation that will result in points on your license and eventually the suspension of your license in many (most?) states.

A lot of states differ on this; and I know a couple definitely have ways to get out of the points, essentially by paying money ("take this 'safe driving course'", etc.) I'm sure some states are stricter than others though.

At least in NY, you can only get rid of 4 points with the course and you can only take the course so often. If you're committing enough offenses to be in danger of losing your license, it ain't really gonna help much.

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

#77

Post by virtualwhys »

Snow emergency tickets are perhaps an order of magnitude worse that your standard parking ticket because not only do you have to pay a hefty fine (AFAIK, not possible to contest), but also have to deal with the fact that you have no car until you pay through the nose to the mobster tow yard as well.

True story: it was the first night of the so called snow emergency (that never came). I was awoken to the sound of a tow truck at 3AM. Running outside (in my underwear) I yelled at the driver, WTF are you doing? There's no snow! He laughed and drove off with my car.

Went to the tow yard the next day and paid the ridiculous fine to get my car back. Pissed off, but whatever, move on.

The next night, same deal, no snow, but the car is towed again! This time, enraged, I walked down to the tow yard (30 minutes away); waited for the right moment (when one of the tow trucks was pulling out to go tow another car), jumped in my car, gunned the engine, and hauled ass out of the yard...and back to my place in the same dry parking spot -- total coup d'etat.

Nothing happened, tow yard probably didn't even know they had my car in the first place.

Moral of the story: ignore reality (i.e. the weather), if the state declares a snow emergency, find off street parking.

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

#78

Post by binarycrusader »

parennoob wrote: post #48
nostromo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's still a perverse incentive; more money in the department who owns that parking budget.

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

#79

Post by mathattack »

If cities complain about Uber and AirBnB, I can't imagine them not raising hell about this. Even if it's perfectly legal, cities will fight like rabid wolverines to protect their revenue sources, especially ones that they don't have to refer to as a dreaded "tax".

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

#80

Post by DannyBee »

lostlogin wrote: post #47
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…

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.

Most red-light cameras (at least in the US) are outsourced, and they lower the yellow light times, sometimes dangerously below any reasonable measure.

http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/yellow-lights

This in turn has actually increased accidents. http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/studies

(i'm citing this mainly for the links, they are clearly a biased site).

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