SpotAgent: Alerts Drivers Of Probability Of Getting A Parking Ticket

I think we all know how annoying it is when you put money in the meter, and then you happen to run 10-15 minutes late only to find that you got a parking ticket. Usually people are just living on hope when they park without putting any money in the meter at all. That’s when you can expect a ticket to be waiting for you when you get back to the car. But now there is a little nifty app called SpotAgent that could potentially leverage the risk a little bit.

A couple of developers named Shea Frederick and James Schaeffer came up with SpotAgent when they realized the city of Baltimore has a record of every parking ticket issued. The records include license plate numbers, dates, times and the address for where each car was parked when it received the ticket. SpotAgent itself collects all this information and bundles it into probability scores. Sound complicated?

I am sure the developers have to feed SpotAgent with data continuously in order to make it useful, but the app itself is dead simple. What it does is tell you how high the probability is that you will get a ticket on the street in Baltimore that you are about to park on if you don’t put money in the meter. It’s as simple as that. You will get a weekly timeline when ticketing is most probable, which will allow you to know whether lazy-parking will be profitable or not.

SpotAgent is currently only tracking parking ticket activity in Baltimore, but with a little bit of work, I am sure SpotAgent could be fed with whatever ticket information from whatever city that makes it available. SpotAgent can be downloaded for free from iTunes App Store. Never again would you have to worry when just popping in to grab a quick coffee at Starbucks or whatever other coffee shop you get your java from. I keep wondering whether the city of Baltimore will make these records confidential now that they realize they are losing out on a lot of money due to this app. If you live in Baltimore, I strongly suggest getting this app.