That's completely unreasonable. What if he'd been on the West Coast, or overseas? Anyone can be forced at any time to travel any distance to New York because of a typo?
Plenty of other places allow traffic tickets to be challenged in writing. Why can't New York?
I'm just asking: what's the alternative? If you can't force people to come to court and face charges then no one would would they?
Fyi: you can hire a lawyer to a represent you in cases like this. And Op is wrong: NYC does permit you to challenge parking tickets by post (and also by app or web). In fact they encourage it due to covid. So just write a letter with the details and some basic evidence of the error. That's how it should be.
I never understand why people can't understand: it's a rules based system, if you don't have to follow the rules, no one does and then it collapses. Americans in particular seem to really struggle with this but its just life...
> He either had to pay $55, drive over 100 miles to appear in court, or not pay the fine and become a criminal.
with a comment listing some unreasonable alternatives. You didn't list the reasonable alternative of making a written response. My disagreement was with the situation presented in your comment and the one you were replying to; I live in a different country and don't know New York's actual legal system.
> I never understand why people can't understand: it's a rules based system, if you don't have to follow the rules, no one does and then it collapses. Americans in particular seem to really struggle with this but its just life...
I don't think anybody here (and only a very few ideologues elsewhere) is arguing against a rules-based system, or for people to disobey laws out of principle. I am arguing that the rules must be fair and reasonable, that people of all levels of intelligence and income can afford to follow. It would be unreasonable to force people to travel long distances or pay for an hour of a lawyer's time to address police mistakes. It would also be unreasonable to expect Pennsylvanians to know how to dispute a New York ticket in writing without clearly informing them (I don't know if that's what happened here, it's just an example).
Plenty of other places allow traffic tickets to be challenged in writing. Why can't New York?