You’re cruising along six miles over the limit and notice flashing blue lights in the mirror. You get a speeding ticket and have to decide what to do. Option A: Suck it up and pay the citation as most people do, or Option B: Head to court and fight the ticket.
Wouldn’t it be helpful if there were some way to fight your ticket and not have to leave home? Apple’s trademarked slogan provides the answer, “There’s an app for that.”
A person is legally entitled to contest traffic tickets, but governments don’t make the process convenient and comfortable. Thanks to technology the red tape is being cut, folded, burned and thrown away.
The resolution of your next traffic violation could be resting in the palm of your hand and not a traffic lawyer even while you read this.
Off The Record
Off the Record is an app which claims a success rate of 97-percent. Users take a picture of their citation, answer a few simple questions and pay a fee which ranges from $59 to $599 — depending on your state and county. The app will assign an attorney who will contest it on your behalf. Vetted by the app, lawyers are chosen based on success rates in other cases. The user can send and receive updates from their lawyer without the need to either meet their lawyer or even showing up in court.
Currently available in just 18 states, attorneys get the ticket waived over 80% of the time, and the citation is reduced to a non-moving violation in 16% of uses.
TIKD
Chris Riley faced a hefty fine for going less than ten mph over the posted limit in Miami. As an entrepreneur, Riley wanted to “give people access to services like attorneys in a cost-efficient way.” He did and launched TIKD
Users enter the time and location of the violation, the find and a photo of the ticket. Attorneys pick up the drudgery from there.
The one-time fee to cover startup costs, the cost is less than the original ticket. Being fully insured means if a user gets points on their license TIKD will pay the original citation and refund the fee.
TIKD won’t cover tickets which involve minors, alcohol, severe injury or death. Also not touched are drag racing and DUIs.
In the old days, a person would retain one attorney to manage it all: speeding tickets, home buying, contracts, litigation, real estate, copyrights, leasing, entertainment, intellectual property, criminological accounting, criminal offenses… the list goes on.
Now, you have to have an attorney for every one of those categories, but an app may help change that.
Of course no application, no matter how good, will make a speeding ticket disappear — if you don’t take a few steps. The apps mentioned here are just one of those steps. Like a good golfer, you must have some follow-through.
Be proactive in double-checking that the speeding ticket — or whatever citation — has been handled. Only the best attorneys experienced in traffic law are chosen, but it is YOUR ticket after all. If the attorney doesn’t follow through, you will be the one to suffer.
Remember the mantra, Trust But Verify.
