For just a bit more proof that young innovators can help dismantle bureaucracy , a Stanford student’s robot lawyer has beaten 160,000 parking tickets
(WASHINGTON TIMES) College freshman Joshua Browder has created an online robot lawyer that has overturned 160,000 traffic tickets in London and New York.
The 19-year-old said he came up with the idea for DoNotPay.co.uk after getting multiple parking tickets in London.
“I didn’t want to pay it, so I become an expert in parking tickets,” he told the New York Post. “I started doing it for friends and family, and then I decided it would be a good school project, so I made the website.”
Mr. Browder, a British student attending Stanford University in California, launched the free service in London last year and expanded it to New York City last month. Drivers who receive parking tickets can upload their information to the site and the lawyer bot will do the rest, the teen said.
In the 21 months since the launch, Mr. Browder said, the site has taken on 250,000 cases and won 160,000, giving it a success rate of 64 percent, the Post reported. Most of the tickets end up overturned because of a simple mistake in the ticket or signs, he said.
Mr. Browder, who wants to major in economics, said he doesn’t plan to ever charge for the service.
“I am doing it as a public service,” he told the Post. “Someone who can’t afford a ticket is the most vulnerable, and I don’t want them to have to pay half the cost of the ticket to defend themselves.”
Mr. Browder plans to expand DoNotPay to Seattle next.
He also is working on a bot to help people with HIV understand their legal rights and one to collect compensation for people who experience delayed flights, Venture Beat reported.
Another of his bot projects would help refugees apply for asylum as part of the Highland Capital summer startup accelerator program, he told Venture Beat.
“I feel like there’s a gold mine of opportunities because so many services and information could be automated using AI, and bots are a perfect way to do that, and it’s disappointing at the moment that it’s mainly used for commerce transactions by ordering flowers and pizzas,” Mr. Browder said.
Tell us in the comments section what you think
I’m definitely going to check this out. I got a ticket in NYC last summer for parking on a street which had no signs in the block on which I parked. I appealed the ticket online with photos of the street’s lack of signs. The appeal was denied and in the reason for denial, the person who reviewed the ticket said and I quote “There is no requirement for signage to be visible in restricted parking zones.” I appealed again asking is out of towners should become mystics or clairvoyants before attempting to park on the streets of NYC and never got an answer back after that.
Yes, I’ve gotten a couple of those BS tickets. Is a “no parking” sign or a yellow painted curb really too much to ask? There are plenty enough rule breakers to fill their coffers that they don’t need to sucker people like that. Another one to watch out for is a lot of suburbs have no overnight street parking laws. I guess it helps pay for the graveyard shift at the cop shop.
I did recently receive $50 back from a $70 parking fine in Portland, Oregon. There is apparently some state ordinance that lists about 15 places you can’t park, one of the ones in the middle of this list was the prohibition on overpass in Oregon. There was no signage, no painted curb and I’d routinely seen cars parked there over a period of years and had parked there myself once or twice before. I totally didn’t see that one coming. Some bored meter maid decided to snag a few cheap quota points that day. I was pretty happy with the refund, considering off street parking is typically $15 for the day.
Bro, Seattle?!? Please God do it for LA!!!
Kind of sad that you reported on this. The lawyers are now going to go after him for practicing without a license even though, perhaps especially because, he has demonstrated that one doesn’t need such a license.