Shareable Plates
A dark, delicious story may be lurking beneath any license plate—and it's your civic duty to explore it. Go ahead and snoop—on neighbors, friends, and the Nissan cutting you off on the BQE.
If you know anything about Uncle Karen, you know Uncle Karen loves a little local surveillance. But in the spirit of authenticity, let’s call it what it is: snooping, prying, failing to mind your own goddamn business. Karen is a busybody with a long track record of sticking his/her/their nose into the affairs of others, such as, but in no way limited to, the number of parking tickets a car might accrue whilst parking in this great, merciless city of ours.
The fact there is a searchable tool to enable this snooping only makes it more delicious. Since the city of New York—prompted by a hero you’ll read about below—created a searchable tool to check a car’s history, you’re almost obligated to use it. If you love New York as much as your t-shirt claims you do, it’s your duty to use the tools they believe will make the city a better, safer place to live. So go ahead and enter a license plate in How’s My Driving and see what they’ve been up to. It could be the car of an unknown neighbor or a close friend or the car weaving fecklessly along the Belt Parkway. Their sordid histories are yours to excavate.
The How’s My Driving tool had a more noble beginning: a software engineer/cyclist named Brian Howald started it on Twitter to track repeat offenders in an attempt to identify unsafe drivers and shame repeat offenders. Its primary function is to identify consistently dangerous drivers to ideally get them off the streets. And I encourage you to use it to do just that.
But the tool also works for non-moving violations. A few months ago I used it to unearth the tawdry and complicated history of an SUV that is usually parked up the street, frequently with a fresh ticket (or tickets) on its windshield. Of course, I didn’t reveal the plate number or the year and model of the car, but I was specific about its years-long infractions. Very specific.
When I checked, that car had violations totaling $32,202.20 dollars which, to me at least, is an astounding figure, and I’ve racked up my own share of bright orange infractions over the years. Thirty-two thousand is a decent sum. (Instagram told me you can buy a castle in Portugal for that kind of money.) But I wanted to break down the math a little further.
The infractions took place over a period of just under seven years or 83 months, making the SUV’s average monthly tally: $388/per month
But I know we can do better. Someone can beat that figure. So I invite you to find a license plate that tells a story—the darker, more brazen, more profligate the story, the better. Use the tool to document the infractions (moving or non-moving) and the most distinctive history will be rewarded with our praise and the very minor celebrity that comes of being featured in Uncle Karen.
Vehicles will be judged by total cost of the collected infractions and by average monthly amount—the total amount divided by the number of months—which seems like the best way to crown the king of parking tickets in our competition. But it’s not the only way. Variety and sheer insanity of the violation history will also be commended. Please send me the most impressive, flagrant, profligate violators you can. All you need to do is DM me or comment, but please don’t use the real plate number.
Is this petty? Yes. At a time when our oligarchy is flouting constitutional freedoms like they’re speed limits, is this the kind of civic engagement we need right now? No. It absolutely is not. But that doesn’t make the How’s My Driving any less fun to use. Fight the oligarchy tomorrow and the day after; today, just do some snooping. It’s your duty.