I still think there is a 5 percent chance that this is from The Onion, but I learned today (via AFP) that a Russian newspaper called The Village has developed an Android app called Parking Douche that allows citizens to photograph lousy parkers and shame them in that newspaper. It is somewhat similar to the Austin, Texas-based "Parking Mobility" app (discussed here) that allows citizens to report drivers who park in handicapped spots, except that instead of getting a ticket as in Austin, the "parking douches" in Russia get publicly shamed and embarrassed.
Here's how Parking Douche works: When you see careless or irresponsible parking in Moscow, you use your Parking Douche app to take a photo of the car via your smartphone, enter the car's license plate number and details of the parking douchiness you have witnessed, and submit it to the newspaper through the app.
The Village newspaper then causes the photo of the douche-car and its license plate to appear on the newspaper's website as a pop-up ad. The pop-up only appears on the screens of readers who are in the same vicinity as the location of the car, as determined by the GPS data sent in by the app. According to AFP, the pop-up of the car will not close "until the viewer has posted them to Facebook or shared them with others," thus "ensur[ing] its owner is suitably shamed and embarrassed."
While the app is currently only in use in Russia, requests to license it have reportedly begun to come in from the UK, US, Germany, Japan and Israel.
Parking Douche from Parking Douche on Vimeo.
This story was first published in Legal Blog Watch, an affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
