App makes parking tickets go away with a snap

Fixed enables users to simply take a photo of their parking tickets and have them challenged in court by an expert team.

Outsourcing painful tasks has been made infinitely easier with smartphones, especially through snap-and-send apps such as PaperKarma — which identifies junk mail and automatically unsubscribes users. Working on a similar concept, Fixed enables users to simply take a photo of their parking tickets and have them challenged in court by an expert team.

According to David Hegarty, one of the co-founders of the San Francisco-based service, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency has around “1000 different parking rules [that] are horrifically hard to understand”, which leads to many tickets issued erroneously by under-pressure parking wardens. When drivers appeal, on average 50 percent have the ticket waived, but not everyone has the time or know-how to take their case to court. With Fixed, those with a ticket simply take a snap of the citation, upload it through the app, alongside details of why they think the ticket was wrongly issued — for example ‘meter broken’ or ‘signs unclear’. The app then automatically calculates the chance drivers have of beating their ticket while the team gets to work preparing the case. If they’re successful, users pay 25 percent of their ticket to Fixed. If they’re not, users must pay the fine, but they haven’t lost anything by trying.

Currently available in San Francisco only, could this type of service work in your part of the world?