Hardly anyone fights it. 94% of parking tickets here are never contested. Of the ones contested by mail, 59% are dismissed.
Autopilot contests every ticket you get, watches your renewal deadlines, warns you before you break a rule, and pays what you lose before the price doubles.
We built each one against a number. The percentages are that job's share of what Chicago actually collects from drivers.
of Chicago's ticket revenue is sticker and plate violations, the most avoidable money the City collects
City sticker and plate sticker, flagged 30 days early with a link straight to the official renewal page. Filing them for you is opt-in and still in testing. The no-sticker ticket is $200.
of ticket revenue comes from violations the app warns you about before they happen
Street cleaning the night before. Snow bans. Meter running out. Cameras spoken aloud as you drive toward them — on iPhone today, Android rolling out.
of tickets are never contested, though 59% of mail contests win and UIC found 1 in 8 tickets is factually wrong
Unlimited letters, no win fee. You never file anything and never go to a hearing.
The ticket is written. You would normally learn about it weeks later.
We scan the City database for your plate daily. The letter is drafted the hour we find it, then held open for your evidence.
Mailed by USPS with your evidence and the records we demand from the City. Still nothing for you to file.
Where most tickets quietly become debt. If the ruling goes against you, we pay the fine, never the penalty.
Plate, address, renewal dates, card. About four minutes, once. After that the only thing we ever need from you is evidence: a photo of the block, a meter receipt. We ask, you reply. That is it, forever.
They argue what happened instead of arguing the ordinance. 23% of every lost city-sticker mail contest in Chicago is coded “Failed to Select one of the Codified Defenses.”
The defense is chosen from the municipal code by violation type, then the facts are fitted to it. We know which ones carry because we pulled 287,532 decided hearings from the City and coded them by the defense that won.
I contest this citation on the grounds that the street cleaning signage at the cited location was obscured from a parked motorist’s view.
Under Chicago Municipal Code § 9-64-040 and Department of Streets and Sanitation rules, "No Parking / Street Cleaning" signs must be visible and legible to a parked motorist before the restricted period begins. Photographs of the block face, taken from the driver’s perspective, are attached.
I request that the City produce: (1) the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation (Bureau of Street Operations) sweeper GPS log for the cited ward and section on the violation date, (2) any 311 cancellation or weather-suspension record affecting this route on that date, and (3) the most recent maintenance record for the signs governing this block face.
Without adequate, visible notice of the restriction, the violation cannot be sustained. I request that this citation be dismissed.
Decided mail hearings ending in dismissal, tickets issued 2023–2025. The weak ones are here too.
Cameras and street cleaning are the hard ones. The app warns you first, the letter is the backstop. Source: City of Chicago records obtained by FOIA, F118906 and F129773.
of Chicago's ticket revenue is late fees. Not violations. Penalties for paying slowly.
That third of the machine stops applying to you the day you sign up. Nobody honest can promise you will never get a ticket, so we promise the ticket never grows: if one doubles on our watch we pay the penalty, and if an unpaid ticket we were handling gets your car booted, we pay the boot, the tow and the storage. Cameras included, no asterisk.
The stack averages $107 a year for a ticketed Chicago driver, more than the subscription costs.
About $8 a month. Less than half of one street-cleaning ticket.
Protect my car · $99/yearCancel any time. Members keep their rate forever.
Chicago's ticket machine runs on drivers who assume they will lose. Four minutes to stop being one of them.