We have all had that instance when we walked out of a store and noticed a nice green mark on our white door. Or the one where we find the last possible spot in a parking lot only to find that the two cars on either side have parked over the line and we cannot fit without being as skinny as a pencil.
Believe it or not, San Francisco has offered a remedy. Because in this city, cars block driveways, drivers forget to curb their wheels, lights get left on, and meters run out. These are all reasons why you might want to contact a vehicle’s owner. If everyone in San Francisco signed up for CurbTXT then it would be easy to get in touch.
Drivers can sign up for CurbTXT by registering their license plates and phone numbers. A sticker on the car gives people an anonymous way to contact the driver through text messaging by referencing the plate number. The service forwards the message to the owner without ever releasing any personal information.
CurbTXT is one of the best ideas when it comes to open communication between individuals. It could turn San Francisco, and the whole world for that matter, into a wonderland of parking good deeds, helping people avoid fines and giving them the opportunity to move their vehicles before they get towed.
CurbTXT faces an uphill battle as far as adoption. It also opens up the possibility of prank texts like “OMG your car is full of monkeys!!!” To combat that, users can report inappropriate messages and abusers will be blocked. According to the Evernote blog, dozens of texts have been sent through the service since it launched last fall. That’s not much, but CurbTXT founders have chatted with people from the San Francisco board of supervisors about getting city support for the project. Until then, the service is getting users through flyers and word-of-mouth.
