Pittsburgh Tries To Publicly Shame You Into Paying Your Parking Tickets

Reader Uri says:

In a recent attempt to resolve it’s financial woes, the city of Pittsburgh decided to try and collect on all unpaid parking tickets and other traffic violations since 2003.

They announced a short grace period before which they’ll “call the cops”, and urged everyone in the city to check on their status.

The means: a website where you can enter any street address or any last name, and it pops up a list of all people with tickets, in some case with their date of birth.

Three days after paying, your name will be purged off the list.

Of course, you can check everybody’s status. According to the Pittsburgh post-gazette, Pittsburgh Steelers linesmen had a few tickets, and they contacted his employer, the team…

I’m guessing that dockets are public in some way so there’s nothing illegal about this, but it’s still an interesting form of social pressure.

There are sexual offender lists available, but I wasn’t aware of a ticket offender list as well.

Uri

Not only can you see your neighbor’s tickets, you can see what they’re charged with. Scandalous.

Let the public shaming begin! We only know one guy in Pittsburgh (seen above wearing last year’s Halloween costume). He didn’t have any tickets. Good job, Brian. You are a hero of safe driving.

YOU MAY HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH A SUMMARY OFFENSE IN PITTSBURGH MUNICIPAL COURT [5th Judicial District of Pennsylvania]

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