
Show HN: Ticket Titan - Fight Traffic Tickets - will_brown
http://www.tickettitan.com
======
Marcus10110
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.

~~~
will_brown
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.

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

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dajohnson89
Not every traffic ticket is fairly given.

~~~
cmurf
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.

~~~
op00to
... Did you win?

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joshmn
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.

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nickysielicki
> 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!

~~~
will_brown
>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.

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alain94040
Can we agree to only fight the tickets that we don't deserve?

~~~
IgorPartola
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...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1npuah/til_that_in_2007_a_group_of_college_students/)

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>

~~~
hugenerd
Virginia is different than most states.

[http://jalopnik.com/what-every-driver-should-know-about-
spee...](http://jalopnik.com/what-every-driver-should-know-about-speeding-in-
virgini-1669902845)

~~~
IgorPartola
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_While_Black)

~~~
CamperBob2
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_.

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

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will_brown
Demo Video:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/uyk4ne4xb13y26i/tt.mp4?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uyk4ne4xb13y26i/tt.mp4?dl=0)

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kevin
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Call-Action-Formulas-Improve-
Results/dp/078521965X)

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](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!

~~~
will_brown
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.

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

~~~
xaqfox
Police officers are not infallible.

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

