So you got a parking ticket. Welcome to the club of 2,173,707 other Ottawans (or out-of-towners) who found a foreboding little piece of paper stuck under their windshield wipers between 2010 and 2015. The bed of your unjustly-parked truck was made by a City of Ottawa parking control officer (or by another agency), and now, if you pay the fine, you may have to sleep in it. Or do you? Instead of making an early payment or the set fine payment, you have the option of either requesting that a first attendant at a court office review your ticket, or requesting a trial by judge in court. But what are your chances of pulling a John Tremills? Is it worth it?

You could AskReddit, but “the front page of the internet” isn’t in agreement on this one. (Are redditors ever?) One Ottawa subreddit user, enrodude, commented in the “Fighting parking tickets” discussion that “Tickets are also designed for people to not to fight them because they get paid more working in a day.” In the “Fighting parking tickets – worth it? Any tips?” discussion, sflynn75 of New Edinburgh, however, argued that “first attendants… typically have the power to reduce the fine in half” if you request a review, and that if you request a trial and “go to court, there is a very high percentage probability the by-law officer will not be in court so the ticket is thrown away.” (To which enrodude, who is apparently a parking enthusiast and isn’t even in agreement with himself – or herself – says, “I have to agree.”) Better to ask the City of Ottawa parking data, which we obtained using the provincial Freedom of Information Act.

According to our analysis of the data for 2010 through 2015, no review was requested for most of the tickets (1,906,896, or a whopping 88 percent). That means that either enrodude was on to something in his first quote and the ticket holders paid their fines outright, or they failed to pay and were assigned a trial code. (Spoiler alert: as you’ll see in the second graph 883,256 tickets resulted in notices being sent). But 174,561 of the remaining 266,811 records (65 percent) did have a relatively hopeful review code of either “Review request accepted,” or “Review outcome upheld.” That’s better than the 92,052 (35 percent) that had a relatively ominous review code of “Review request denied,” “Review outcome denied,” or “Notice of impending conviction.” (We left “Review requested” out because it could swing either way.) See the graph below for a visual of all of the review code data. And if you’re interested, a legend for the codes and headings for the raw parking data is provided via DocumentCloud at the end of this post.

As sflynn75 wrote on reddit, reviews are successful and can result in a reduced fee when the ticket holder and the first attendant are able to to come to a compromise. But if you’re set on avoiding paying any money at all for the ticket, you have to request a trial and argue your innocence in court. (You could do nothing, but that would result in your license never being renewed again so…) Our analysis of the data shows that, of the 883,256 tickets that were not dealt with prior to notices being sent, at least 851,501 (96 percent) had dissuasive documentation. Forty-six percent had a “Notice of impending conviction,” 30 percent had a “Certificate requesting plate denial,” and 21 percent had a “Notice of fine and due date.” Ouch!

Interestingly enough, during our analysis we found that tickets with positive review codes of either “Review request accepted” or “Review outcome upheld” had some common factors. The most common issuing agency was Parking Services, the most common ticket description was “UNAUTHORIZED PARKING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY,” and the most common street cited on the ticket was George Street. But (disclaimer!) before you go running off to check if you have a winning ticket, remember to keep in mind that the most common issuing agency for ALL tickets – review or no review – was Parking Services and that, ultimately, each case is different. Just because 174,561 other people had relatively positive review experiences between 2010 and 2015, it doesn’t mean that yours will be, too.

Speaking on background, an employee of the satellite Provincial Offences Court Offices at 110 Laurier Ave. West advised that unless you have witnesses and hard evidence to support your innocence, it’s best to just make the early payment, which is typically $20 lower than the set fine, or at the most explain your case to a first attendant and hope for a reduced fee. Hey, at least you can take comfort in the thought that some of the money might go toward the Segregated Bike Lane Pilot Project. It’s free to park your bicycle at all city-owned parking lots and garages.