Ask HN: Review My Start Up Idea - Traffic Ticket Insurance

Parking in cities sucks and driving around with the ever growing number of camera speed traps is even worse. IMHO cities are using them to generate revenue instead of furthering safer road conditions. DC, where I live, gen. 55 ML last year: http://aol.it/SPgnZT

Anyways, what do you think of creating an insurance pool where people pay a nominal monthly fee ($9 to $15) for the peace of mind that if they get a speeding ticket, the ticket will be covered.

First objection -- "the expected utility calculations show this as loosing deal b/c the losses of a traffic ticket are pretty predictable (e.g. you are not loosing $250K in a home fire, just getting a $250 fine)."

Agree with this objection, but I don't think it breaks the deal. 1) The start-up could pair insurance with another product like savings offer to obscure the monthly investment an individual makes, and 2) budgeting a monthly cost is possibly better than being at risk of a budget breaking ticket.

Second objection -- "moral hazard: people will drive more freely with the insurance knowing that their tickets will be paid."

We wouldn't be insuring against rises in premiums; there's still an incentive to drive responsibly. From a quick search I found two other people who tried this and failed. I suspect b/c they had few good ideas about marketing. Personally, I would pay a reoccurring $9 to insure against traffic tickets and maybe a little more to also include parking tickets.<p>But would you?

And any advice on what other road blocks :) would help. Also ideas about branding? Right now I'm considering RescueTicket, if I go forward with this, as the name. Last, I could see a big play towards transparency where there's page that shows monthly subscription revenue and monthly payouts--in the spirit of Peldi's great 2008 Balsamiq blog post: http://bit.ly/WfjA5I