Show HN: Ticket Titan - Fight Traffic Tickets | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Ticket Titan - Fight Traffic Tickets

tickettitan.com

22 pointswill_brown43 comments

Instead, I want to build a tool that constantly scans your plate number for tickets and auto-pays them as soon as they show up to avoid late fees. ...Because I deserved every ticket I've ever received.

You would be going after the right market, 95% of people just pay their ticket ;)

However, by lowering the barrier to legal representation it is our goal that TicketTitan may increase the percentage of people who fight. For example, did you know that in most states by paying a ticket you admit guilt of the violation, which often results in points on your license and insurance increases? Fighting a ticket in Court, even without a lawful defense, may result in dismissal, no conviction, no points, no school, and/or reduced fines.

Or, as parent suggests, you could just take responsibility for your actions...

Not every traffic ticket is fairly given.

Exactly. See Chicago's photo red light debacle. And that's a case where otherwise I'd support the idea because running red lights kills and maims people with a much higher incidence than say speeding on the highway.

The two speeding tickets I've gotten: one was deserved, but I still fought it for a minimal (standard) plea bargain reduction. The other, the cop flat out lied twice. He said he used pace method, yet was never going the speed I was (he came upon me like a bullet and I wasn't speeding); but then the ticket had the radar box checked, and I said I wouldn't sign it until he corrected it. He said he wasn't going to change the ticket and if I didn't sign it he'd take me to jail. Small podunk town in Kansas just randomly pulling people over to make money. Modern day highwayman.

... Did you win?

I didn't know HN loved cops so much. In what way is paying a ticket taking "responsibility for your actions"?

Both you and the OP are being pretty black and white about this. Paying for speeding tickets you deserve because you were speeding is hardly "loving cops so much".

Language like "deserve" is what I'm criticizing. Fighting a traffic ticket isn't a moral failure.

I mean, if you were speeding above the limit then you do "deserve" a ticket. Everyone is bound by the rules of the road.

This is SUCH an insufferable point of view. You're seriously of the belief that all traffic tickets are valid and that citizens who gasp dare to fight these tickets in court is are not responsible people?

My comments parent did say fighting "without a lawful defense." I'm pretty sure that fighting an invalid ticket is a lawful defense.

There was a startup doing just this - https://AutoPay.io - that was advertising in Boston and Cambridge back in March.

Amusingly, they seemed to follow around the people issuing tickets, and slipping fliers[1] under windshield wipers. There were a bunch of cars with a bright orange ticket under one wiper, and a bright green flier under the other.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/5tgbhPY.jpg

i use fixed for this, they have a product called ticket guardian - http://www.fixed.com/

What were the reasons for using WordPress to power this? Not saying it's wrong by any means, but I'd be interested in hearing the table's discussion :)

Edit: please explain downvotes. I'm not sure why my curiosity that directly relates to the discussion of the OP would be anything but relevant, productive, and supportive.

> What is a participating law firm?

> Participating law firms are the law firms which register an account, advertise their fees, and may be hired through TicketTitan.com. Only licensed attorneys in good standing with their state bar(s) may register to be a participating law firm on TicketTitan.com. Law firms may register and advertise their fees for free, paying a very small flat processing fee to TicketTitan.com only when hired by a client.

> *Currently, TicketTitan.com only allows one law firm per county to advertise their fees, but additional law firms may register and be placed on a waiting list.

lol okay. So "firms" is really "first firm to register in your county".

It's an absolutely fantastic idea but this tool is worthless to me until that isn't the case. Why are you doing this?

Edit: Upon further reading, it's because one of the founders of OP's site runs a law firm named after this site which is conveniently one of the firms registered. What a racket!

>It's an absolutely fantastic idea but this tool is worthless to me until that isn't the case. Why are you doing this?

Thanks, law is not an easy thing to scale. Not unlike most startups we are growing, eventually every jurisdiction be covered and by multiple law firms, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

>Edit: Upon further reading, it's because one of the founders of OP's site runs a law firm named after this site which is conveniently one of the firms registered. What a racket!

First, no I am OP and I do not have a law firm that is on TicketTitan, but another founder does. Do you consider Orbitz a racket? Was AirBnB a racket when it first started with only 1 listing, a air mattress in the founders apartment? Orbitz connected travelers with flights (but Orbitz was owned by the airlines), AirBnB offered an air mattress to sleep on in SF but that air mattress was in the apartment of the founder.

Can we agree to only fight the tickets that we don't deserve?

agreed

Of course. The idea is for clients to be able to input their ticket info and immediately see the legal fee of the available law firm(s) to fight the ticket. The user may choose to research the law firm(s) further or hire the law firm, but it is always the decision of the user whether or not to hire a law firm to fight their ticket.

Why would you hire a firm to fight a ticket?

Send a letter and you'll get it auto-reduced, except if you want to get out of the ticket.

No. We can't agree. Accidents for instance happen, and even if you're at fault it should be your choice to get a lawyer to help reduce your costs.

I suppose. But also can we agree to raise the ridiculous speed limits and actually enforce them? 55 and 65 mph is too low and nobody drives that slow. See https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1npuah/til_t...

In my mind if you are doing 110 in a 65, sure, you get a ticket. But I distinctly remember being in a car driving through Virginia (speed limit 70 mph) in a large number of cars all following each other all doing 72-75. It was a straight bit of road, everyone was mostly in the right lane (sign said to keep right unless to pass). Out of nowhere a state trooper pulls up on the left, passes, gets in front of our car and pulls over the guy in front of us. I should mention that the car in front of us was from out of state. Now, it is possible that that guy was getting pulled over for something other than speeding, but as anyone that's driven through VA can tell you, the state troopers there are very eager to give out speeding tickets, so chances are it was for speeding. Why did that guy arbitrarily get pulled over instead of our car, or any of the two dozen around us, all doing the same speed? Probably because it was a nice car with an out of state license plate. 75 mph is not an unreasonable speed on a straight road during daytime with good visibility and weather. It's basically left to the police to determine what the real speed limit is, which seems wrong.

</rant>

Virginia is different than most states.

http://jalopnik.com/what-every-driver-should-know-about-spee...

Right. The real speed limit in VA is close to 80 mph (though you can get pulled over for doing less, presumably if "driving while black" [1]). So why aren't there signs that read "SPEED LIMIT 80"? Why is it up to the officer's discretion to decide if today it's 80, 78, 75, etc.? (I know why: federal government, funding, etc.)

I am in no way against speed limits being enforced, I just don't like the idea of them being set by the officer's mood and zeal on any given day. I'd rather know what the speed limit really is rather than trying to guess it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_While_Black

Federal funding is no longer tied to speed enforcement. Highway speed limits are set artificially low because it's convenient and profitable for the police. (Given that statistics do not reliably support the usual contention that higher speed limits are more dangerous, the burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise.)

Maybe you're not speeding, but rest assured, there's some other attribute of your driving or your car's condition that will allow law enforcement to pull you over if they want. This isn't a coincidence. For better or worse, the police will tell you that they catch a lot of genuine bad actors this way.

It's not that they want to be able to stop everyone... it's that they want to be able to stop anyone.

Near me in VA there is a highway with two signs quite close together. One says "Speed Limit 55" and the other says (I won't have the words exactly right), "Trucks slower than 55mph must stay in right lane." The combination of signs seems to acknowledge that most traffic is exceeding the speed limit.

I've seen this. You don't want some log truck lumbering along at 53 mph in the center or left lane. Also it would be very surprising to be hassled for going 60 mph here.

They can, and do, issue citations for not obeying road signs like this, and I am glad for it.

That's exactly the issue. You should not be surprised when you are hassled. Currently, you can be pulled over for doing 59 in a 55. As far as I can tell nobody does 55, unless it is in a 45. You shouldn't have to guess what is acceptable in each county or town. You should know what the real speed limit is.

Is there a 4 mph "forgiveness" in the law somewhere? I thought that technically it was an infraction to travel 56 in a 55, which is equally ridiculous as being ticketed for going 59 in the same spot.

I own a car that encourages the driver to go fast (think Autobahn speeds) with its power and ride comfort. I am still going slower than 60 in the 55 zones.

It's not unreasonable no. So why not stick to the speed limit and actually lobby your local government to change the limits.

</rant>

I obey all speed limits in part because if speed limits can be written on signs without meaning anything, then they will become more and more absurd. If I'm in a neighborhood where the posted limit is 25 but the residents drive 35, they're all going to have to face the contradiction as I pass though. And I do pull over sometimes because I'm pretty sure slow traffic ought to yield.

This is such an unreasonable standard. There is literally no action I could take that would change the law beyond spending the vast majority of my time on it. I can't do this. Expecting people to drive 55 on an 8 lane fucking highway is insane. You support this is more insane. Stop.

I live in Virginia and I find it difficult to believe that a driver was pulled over for traveling 75 mph in a 70 mph zone. You usually have a 10% or 10 mph buffer between the speed limit and the cop being grassed enough to think that you are worth the trouble. They have plenty of other things to issue tickets for, and they are also engaging in 'profiling' in the hope of finding drugs or money which means more cash or a nice car for their department.

Instead of looking at the law as it limits your freedom to make a judgment call about how you operate the car, look at it instead as supporting your freedom to not have yourself and your family killed on the highway.

You're spending 2-3 hours driving across the state, so why is the 15 minutes you'd save going 75 mph so important? Just set your cruise at 70: I can almost guarantee that you won't get a ticket, and if you do, you will be able to get a speedometer calibration certificate for court.

There are some times where your guilt and the law are ambiguous, and so who's to say that you do or don't deserve a ticket? Also, you're welcome to pay your tickets and not fight them, often the cost of hiring a lawyer is more than the fine anyway.

If you're asking the kind of people who have no consideration for others, and thus break parking and traffic laws, to be considerate to others, I think you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Only Florida shows up for states (for me at least)

Demo Video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uyk4ne4xb13y26i/tt.mp4?dl=0

Let me start with some disclosure: We funded a company to do exactly this. I won’t mention them here as a courtesy to you, but know that I will have some bias as I go through this.

When I advise startups about landing pages, I usually refer to some teachings from Call to Action.

http://www.amazon.com/Call-Action-Formulas-Improve-Results/d...

The examples in the book are fairly outdated, but the lessons are sound. The one I’ll talk about here has to do with the questions visitors need to have answered before they’ll proceed to clicking a call to action.

  - What is it?
  - Is this right for me?
  - Is it legit?
  - What’s the catch? / How much does it cost?
  - Who else is using this?
  - Can I get help?

Different users have different configurations of those questions they need to have answered before they move forward down your conversion funnel. Great landing pages answer all of them efficiently.

You’re missing a number of answers to those questions on your site. Some can be found on your FAQ, but I think you need to front load more of them. The number one problem for me and the reason why I’ll use our portfolio startup’s site over yours is that this doesn’t look professional. When it comes to legal issues / fines, trusting you to get the job done and keeping me from getting into more trouble is what I need to feel to hand over my problem to you.

Part of it is the design and that’s easily fixed with a nicer template at the least. Evidence of how many tickets you’ve successfully fought or won, or information that just fighting a ticket is worth doing because the courts don’t want to dedicate resources to fighting a parking ticket would be helpful.

This FAQ question, however, made me cringe: http://www.tickettitan.com/faq/#law

There’s marketing speak mixed in with some defensiveness and some confusing reference to what feels like a conflict of interest. Thinking through it, I don’t think there is a conflict of interest, but the way you worded it makes me feel like there is. If it were me, I’d just remove the question. If you’re the only firm that gets the ticket info, then I’d remove from the interface what looks like an assignment of a firm to a ticket. It just raises questions that are distracting.

This service should be an abstraction. Give us the ticket, we’ll take care of it. X % gets removed. If not, we pay the ticket automatically for you. Either way, this is how you stop worrying about this piece of paper.

A lot of potential here, though. The name is great. It’s memorable. Build a brand that it deserves. Start with copy and then move to the design.

Good luck and thanks for sharing!

Appreciate the time and the resource. Funny enough all of your advice is still applicable, but note there are major differences in services between: a. Fighting a parking ticket (YC company), and b. Fighting a traffic ticket (us). For example the later requires a licensed attorney, some traffic tickets are mandatory court, etc...). I think some others in the comments equated the two, so I'll take that as there is room to improve our communication and convey our service more effectively.

You and Dang should definitely keep doing this for HN

Edit: I just viewed their website and I am taken aback, they did move on from parking to include other forms of tickets.

An easier and cheaper way to go is (a) stop texting and driving and (b) slow down, leadfoot.

Police officers are not infallible.

Which is why many people are installing their own dash cams.

For the times that the ticket is the fault of the driver I would agree with you.

But when I'm not at fault then I should fight the ticket. Because I really shouldn't have to.

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