NYC Traffic Ticket | NY City Sights

If you’ve been texting while driving in NY State, stop right now. On November 1st, NY State became the 14th state to ban texting while driving. That includes reading, typing and/or sending text messages, and the fine is up to $150.

But there is are two twists to this ban that most of the other states don’t have:

– You can’t be pulled over for this violation, but you can get a ticket for texting if you’re stopped for something else. This means the ban is a secondary enforcement law.
– This law also makes new drivers take an additional 30 hours of supervised driving, and says that a new driver can have only one passenger under 21 in their car, instead of two passengers.

Is texting really all that bad? The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that a driver text messaging is 23 times more likely to get in a crash than a non-distracted driver. Check out what our friends at 888 Red Light have to say about the new law.

And a poll by The New York Times & CBS Ninety-seven percent found people supported the banning texting while driving, which is significantly high for any kind of poll. Eighty percent also support a ban on talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving. Half of the people surveyed felt the punishment for texting while driving should be just as severe as for drunken driving.

Read more about the NYT Poll and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Study.

Don’t you hate when you run back to your meter and find a ticket issued just 2 minutes after the meter expired?

Last week, the NY City Council approved legislation (which was introduced way back in March 2009) that gives you an extra five minutes ‘grace period’ before Muni-Meter parking regulations and Alternate Side of the Street parking rules are enforced. Mayor Bloomberg says that this will lead to ‘chaos’ and says he will veto this measure, but the Council can over-ride his veto with a two-thirds majority.

The City Council, which passed the law at an overwhelming 47-2 majority, made its decision on the premise that everyone’s watch cannot possibly be set to the exact same time. So if you believe your meter runs out at 2:17pm and your watch is a few minutes slow, then you don’t really deserve a ticket if you get to your car when your watch says 2:17.
[...] Read the rest of this post »

Two of our readers wrote in to ask where they can park a commercial vehicle, like a U-Haul van or truck. Turns out it’s not so easy.

Let’s say you’ve rented a U-Haul to move and need to double park on the street. In most situations, you can double-park to ‘expeditiously’ make pickups and deliveries – as long as stopping, standing, or parking is not prohibited, and as long as there isn’t a free parking space or loading zone within 100 fee that that you could be using. But we all know that loading and unloading a U-Haul isn’t expeditious, so be careful where you double park.

If you’re looking to park your van during the day or overnight, the New York Department of Transportation (DOT) simply doesn’t allow commercial vehicles to park for more than three hours and doesn’t allow overnight parking on a residential street from 9pm – 5am on any street. If you do get a ticket for overnight parking, you have to prove that you were ‘actively engaged in business’ at a location within three blocks of where you got the summons.

So find a garage that doesn’t charge you an arm and a leg to park overnight, and you’ll save yourself a bundle in parking tickets. We’re asking our garage partners to let us know if they’ll take a large van or commercial truck, and then we’ll post the list of garages on our site and on this blog.

Here are some locations where you can park a van, trailer, or truck:

QuikPark — 223 W 46th between 8th & Broadway, open lot on the North side of the street. The average box-car truck rate is $50.00 for 24 hours. Call ahead at 917-837-0193 to reserve your spot.

Parking a commercial vehicle is actually pretty complicated stuff, so [...] Read the rest of this post »

Last week Mayor Bloomberg announced new initiatives to make street parking in NYC easier. His proposals include:

Installing Smart Parking Meters
Nicer Parking Enforcement Agents
Online Payments for Parking Fines
Reduced Alternate-Side-of-the-Street Parking Rgulations
Lower Penalties for Overdue Parking Fines

[...] Read the rest of this post »

Yes, it’s true. According to the June 2009 In the Driver’s Seat AutoVantage Road Rage Survey, NYC drivers were rated the angriest in the country. Why? Because we’re angry and aggressive. We tailgate, cut off other drivers, lose our tempers, honk our horns, speed (a bit hard to believe with all the traffic), go through red lights, and worst of all — use obscene gestures.

NYC unseated Miami after three years to take this prestigious honor.

With all this road rage happening, Park It! NYC and 888 Red Light wondered how many tickets, points, and fines you can rack up for all this bad behavior. Turns out that your wallet can take quite a hit. Here’s how:

Running a Red Light — $250 fine plus 3 points
Honking Your Horn — $250 fine
Tailgating – $180 fine plus 4 points
Speeding — $200 plus 3 – 11 points
Find out more fines… [...] Read the rest of this post »