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from the queue-the-lawyer-jokes-in-3-2-1 dept.
A chatbot-"ai"-lawyer keeps filing appeals against parking tickets and similar minor offenses. The author claims it has defeated an estimated 375,000 parking tickets by now -- defeated or appealed? Is every appeal a sure win with this bot-created-paperwork? Do people even contact lawyers to fight parking tickets? Isn't the lawyer fee almost always going to be higher than the fine? Sure, it might be about the good fight and standing up for what is right, etc. but still.
After reading the story I'm still unsure what the actual AI part of the chatbot is, it seems to just be one big decision-tree. But I guess that doesn't get as much press as claiming you have invented a lawyer-AI.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal-donotpay-us-uk
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:20PM (11 children)
So, here's the other thing. This only works until it becomes successful enough to be noticed.
Right now, most people pay tickets. A few fight them, and those are either people who actually retained counsel (which generally makes it "not worth it" to collect a $80 ticket), or are feisty pro-se people who want a platform to make a stink (likely also not worth it, though probably a better bet than when the other side has counsel).
DoNotPay generates form letters. I generated one for a hypothetical red light camera ticket. It states 1.) the person intends to appeal, 2.) several constitutional grounds on which the person intends to fight (proof of who was responsible, right to avoid self incrimination, right to confront accuser), 3.) demands evidence be preserved, and 4.) requests the jurisdiction drop the matter rather than wasting money fighting in court.
Now imagine a jurisdiction getting 100 such letters a day. It's now a significant portion of your revenue lost to write those tickets off in the "not worth it" pile. And, let's face it, this is largely a bluff - most people don't want to show up in court, and probably can't make good on the constitutional arguments (side note - I think the objections are 100% valid, and these cameras are a legal abomination, but the fact remains the courts have not agreed with these arguments to date, so the odds an amateur will show up and win with them are small).
At that point, I'd prepare a form RESPONSE to DoNotPay. Something like "We understand and agree you have the right to challenge this ticket in court, and if you wish to proceed, we will agree to schedule your hearing. While the arguments you present are not per se frivolous, you should know that courts have repeatedly rejected those arguments in similar cases (see ). If we proceed to court, we intend to argue those precedents and expect to prevail. If you wish to reconsider and pay the fine, we offer you 14 days submit payment in full. Otherwise, we will see you at the hearing."
I'd expect most DoNotPay users would give up and pay at this point - is spending your day at a hearing to fight an $80 ticket worth it to you? By not getting an actual lawyer, and not doing your own work, you've signalled your intent to fight the ticket doesn't really extend further than filling out a form on the internet.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:35PM (7 children)
You're acting like this is just a tit waiting for a tat with no larger context. There is a larger context. It's doing good. You appear to be advocating evil as some sort of balance. They are not comparable.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:00PM (1 child)
Your attribution of motive is misplaced.
I am in no way ADVOCATING for governments to do more to collect these tickets (if you read what I actually wrote, I considered these so-called tickets an "abomination"). I am PREDICTING that response. Not the same thing.
Today, multiple jurisdictions issue such "tickets". I don't think they're just. I think they should NOT BE ISSUED in the first place.
But given governments DO issue these, I think the "nicely worded appeal" approach here has a limited shelf life as a deterrent to the government continuing to try to collect these unjust "tickets." I am predicting that these will soon become ineffective. Not saying that's a good thing.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:42PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:06PM
He's not "advocating" anything, nitwit, he's predicting the countermeasure that will render this useless as soon as it becomes popular, regardless of any moral high ground.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:07PM (3 children)
> Now imagine a jurisdiction actually having to budget properly and get approval for the budget from the taxpayers,
> rather than extorting a good portion of it by acting as highway bandits.
I'll disagree with that.
You make a rule "to protect people, don't drive like an idiot in this area". Humans break the rule. Jailing them is too expensive, and taking their license too debilitating, especially for a first offense.
So you do what works well: hit them at the wallet. (Note that making fines proportional to income is what works. fixed fines may be useless or unfair, depending on your social class)
Watch the money pour in, because you did put a giant sign that says "Warning: you're about to get caught", yet hundreds of distracted idiots still got caught, some of them multiple times at the same place (really, automated fixed radars are a testament to driver stupidity).
What are you going to do with all that money? It's income that people "volunteered", while at the same time everyone bitches about their taxes. Are you going to donate those millions, while telling people you need to raise taxes next year?
Nope, you add the income to the general fund, and that reduces the pressure on the budget (until you greedily give yourself a raise and start all over again).
IF you raise the number of cameras because you have to make for a predicted income shortfall, AND put illogical road rules around the cameras/cops to trap people, I agree with your characterization.
But after years of driving through Chicago during peak camera time, I can tell you you that just enforcing uncontroversial rules of the road, on distracted/obnoxious drivers, is enough to make a chunk of cash you need to properly include in the budget every year.
Rural people probably have good reasons to see things a different way.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:40PM (2 children)
Yeah, here's the problem. 'Drive like an idiot' is a little less than perfectly rigorous in definition. And in a bureaucracy any ambiguity can and will be defined just as far in their favor as possible, and then after that they start eroding the boundaries of the possible.
Also I don't think they refrain from taking the license out of any concern for the bad driver. It's because putting the bad drivers back on the road maximizes their income. They want the bad drivers to go to work and make money to pay their budget. Strict enforcement would be much less profitable than selective enforcement is.
"IF you raise the number of cameras because you have to make for a predicted income shortfall, AND put illogical road rules around the cameras/cops to trap people, I agree with your characterization"
Both are done. There have even been cases where they were caught timing lights to produce more tickets (which means they were deliberately making the road less safe in order to increase revenue, think about it.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
> 'Drive like an idiot' is a little less than perfectly rigorous in definition. And in a bureaucracy any ambiguity can and will be defined just as far
> in their favor as possible, and then after that they start eroding the boundaries of the possible.
I was intentionally being vague to avoid nitpicks. In reality, you get "don't drive over 40MPH in front of the elementary school", which few would logically argue against, yet many still do once logic is replaced by a steering wheel.
You seem, like too many dwellers of this site, to always treat these kind of decisions as people who do not exist as human beings subjected to the rules. While DC is special, I'm pretty sure the city hall employees and mayor's friends in nowhereville, AL have to deal with speed limits and maybe even the one red light. Nefariously changing the rules to raise money by making everyone angry is a good Hollywood topic, but real humans are too fickle to participate in most grand conspiracies labelled "government".
> There have even been cases where they were caught timing lights to produce more tickets (which means they were
> deliberately making the road less safe in order to increase revenue, think about it.)
Did I just point out living in Chicago when they blanketed the place with red light cameras? Everyone was talking about the possibility of light timing tinkering.
I didn't get out of my way to time those lights before and after. One thing I can tell you: they didn't need to cheat to get base revenue (most cheating was bribes). I saw people getting flashed many times a week, and I don't recall ever thinking "that was too short". Pretty much all instances where I was in a good position to judge the action, the person could have stopped, even if they were above the speed limit to start with. And the tech worked well: I saw many people just beating the light not getting flashed, and people just a bit too late getting caught. They increased revenue by putting those everywhere to catch more people (they pay for themselves), they didn't even need cheating on the timing.
I don't like that the Chicago speed limits are reasonably set for snowstorm days, making speeding tickets absurdly easy to get, which compounds to people caught blowing red lights not exactly causing me to weep.
There is the problem that enforcing the lights with cameras (or the speed with radars) has been studied to cause accidents. But that points the problem to the rule being enforced.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:56PM
Actually that's one of the problems. There's absolutely no logical reason to think that 39mph is safe but 41mph is unsafe on the same bit of road at the same time. It just doesn't work that way. So what happens is that speed limits are selectively enforced. In many cases that works in favor of sanity (cops are unlikely to pull you for 1mph over, which is a good thing) but it also leads to abuses (out of state plates, beater car, THIS ONE we can pull over for 1mph and roust him if we want.)
Even the law, most places, acknowledges this. There's often verbiage about 'reasonable and prudent for the circumstances' and in many cases the judge can simply throw out speeding tickets where the speed is stipulated and agreed and over limit IF you present what he accepts as a good reason to have done so. And again, that seems almost like a sanity safety release valve, until you consider how it can wind up causing two people guilty of the same behavior to be treated so very differently.
As to the red light cameras, I don't know about Chicago specifically, but in many areas they've introduced them relatively well configured, then quietly changed things once they were accepted. But there have been cases where they've shortened the light sequence for greater revenue, and there are also a lot of complaints about the way right-on-red is handled. It's perfectly legal many places to make a right on red immediately after coming to a stop if the way is clear, yet doing so often results in a ticket being mailed anyway. It's then on you to contest it, with no accuser to confront. Hardly seems like something that a 'justice' system worth of the name would do, does it?
http://abc7chicago.com/news/wrong-on-red-red-light-cameras-rake-in-revenue-for-suburbs/2024820/ (right turns)
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170320/downtown/red-light-rules-change-as-city-relaxes-time-allowed-run-light (some timing issues)
The thing is, these things are added little by little, at a municipal level, with no consistency. They might be working reasonable in one town and not in the next. It's very hard to find out exactly how each one works and it's very hard to fight their accusations in court. Apply them consistently and openly, so everyone knows how they're working in each case and it can be debated openly and argued in court freely and they might be ok. But that's just not how it's being done.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:39PM (1 child)
let's face it, this is largely a bluff - most people don't want to show up in court
If you request a trial but don't show up to it, the court can uphold the ticket, and may be likely to. Moreover, the court may charge a fee for holding the trial.
I don't see the point in just sending a letter saying that you intend to contest a ticket, but not actually contesting it. That sounds ineffective.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:59PM
Unless you're expecting the "AI" to show up in court and argue for you, that's exactly what you're doing by sending the letter DoNotPay generates.
The letter (at least the one I generated - YMMV) expressly requests a hearing, but adds the REQUEST that the municipality drop the matter rather than go through the expense of a trial. If you send this letter (unless you really do want to fight it out in court on constitutional grounds - in that case, I wish you the best!), you're PROBABLY hoping the city will weight the cost of the trial vs. what they can get from you, and voluntarily drop the citation (as the letter explicitly requests).
That's pretty much a textbook bluff. The sender asks for a trial they will likely lose at in the hope that they make it too much of a hassle for the other side to pursue. If the hearing gets scheduled, guess what? You're likely paying the fine AND the court costs.
(Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:09PM
I once got pulled over by a local officer that seemed apologetic that he was being forced to do so by the state police.
He strongly recommended that I challenge the ticket.
I did so, and on the court day it turns out that there were about 30 of us that followed his advice. We all got minimum fine and no points. Everyone else got the full amount.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh