New York City has a law against commercial trucks and buses idling while parked. To try and enforce the law, the city created a reward program for citizens to report (or snitch) on vehicles they see idling. The person who reports gets to take home 25 percent of the fine, which ranges from $350 to $2,000 for repeat offenders. Based on data from a NY Post report, there are a few folks who have made reporting these idlers into a somewhat lucrative side hustle.
In 2018, a lawyer by the name of David Dong took home $4,912.80 from 47 tips. He just edged out Zachary Tinkelman, who managed to score $4,600 from his reports. The story from the NY Post says the city has handed out nearly $20,000 to just 13 individuals. So even though there aren't many people trying to make money off this, the few doing it are getting a fair bit of coin for their efforts.
This law went into effect to try and clean up the air in NYC. In most areas you can get a fine for idling longer than 3 minutes, but in a school zone the limit is only 1 minute. Ever since New York implemented the reward program in 2018, the number of tips have grown exponentially — 2017 only had 24, while 2018 had a whopping 1,038 violations.
The report goes on to share some insight on the leader, Dong. He's described as "a machine" by one of the program's biggest advocates, George Pakenham.
"He's very aggressive," Pakenham said. "He's pursuing this in an entrepreneurial way."
As more folks become aware of this program by getting fined themselves, there's a good chance the amount of needless idling will actually go down. Whether the method of achieving said goal is the way we should be going about it ... well, we'll leave that one to the comment section below.
In 2018, a lawyer by the name of David Dong took home $4,912.80 from 47 tips. He just edged out Zachary Tinkelman, who managed to score $4,600 from his reports. The story from the NY Post says the city has handed out nearly $20,000 to just 13 individuals. So even though there aren't many people trying to make money off this, the few doing it are getting a fair bit of coin for their efforts.
This law went into effect to try and clean up the air in NYC. In most areas you can get a fine for idling longer than 3 minutes, but in a school zone the limit is only 1 minute. Ever since New York implemented the reward program in 2018, the number of tips have grown exponentially — 2017 only had 24, while 2018 had a whopping 1,038 violations.
The report goes on to share some insight on the leader, Dong. He's described as "a machine" by one of the program's biggest advocates, George Pakenham.
"He's very aggressive," Pakenham said. "He's pursuing this in an entrepreneurial way."
As more folks become aware of this program by getting fined themselves, there's a good chance the amount of needless idling will actually go down. Whether the method of achieving said goal is the way we should be going about it ... well, we'll leave that one to the comment section below.
Sign in to post
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Continue