A young driver has developed a website to help motorists appeal if they believe they have been unfairly ticketed, enabling them to bypass the usually torturous appeal process entirely.
Parking tickets are an inflammatory subject – with so many examples of cowboy clampers and, let’s say, ‘over-zealous’ councils handing out fines with seeming relish, the public has been left wary about the reasons for being given a parking ticket in the first place. While you can appeal a ticket (sometimes using humour to defeat a council), it’s an issue that’s clearly irked Joshua Browder, a recently qualified driver.
The 18-year-old from London received 30 parking tickets over a nine-month period after passing his test. Believing that the council was operating on a “tickets first and ask questions later” policy and fining Joshua for what he believed were trivial reasons, the teenager spent hundreds of hours appealing the tickets and in many cases, winning.
The time-draining experience led Joshua to set up donotpay.co.uk, a website where motorists can choose from a selection of 12 defence options and fill out their details before the resulting automatically-generated appeal is sent on to the council; the entire process takes under one minute. The service has proven to be hugely popular with the site initially crashing under the strain of applications from irate drivers.
While Joshua has set about expanding its capacity, he has no plans to charge motorists for using the site – so if you feel you’ve been ticketed unfairly and lack the time, patience or experience to create an effective appeal, Joshua’s website could be, well, just the ticket.
Joshua’s website allows you to choose from one of 12 options that best suit your appeal; the options were created in conjunction with a specialist traffic lawyer.
Main image © Ashley Coates