Jerk AlertHow it works
Jerk Alert is a shared record of how people drive, built from reports filed by the drivers who saw it happen. Looking up a plate takes a few seconds. Filing a report takes about ten. There is nothing to write, because there is nowhere to write it.
The short version
- Look up any US plate and see the reports filed against it and its Erk Score.
- File a report in four taps — plate, place, category, severity. No typing.
- Endorse or flag what other drivers filed. Those are the only two actions on a report.
- Plates identify vehicles, not people. No owner lookups, no DMV data, no identity data of any kind.
- Free, on Android, 18 and over.
Filing a report
Typed as it appears on the vehicle. Nothing is looked up from it, and nothing about the owner is retrieved.
Streets and intersections we maintain. You choose one — it is not typed, and it is not your phone's position.
Tailgating, unsafe lane change, ran a red, and so on. This is the entire description of what happened.
How dangerous it was, not how annoying. The scale is explained on the Erk Score page.
That is the whole report. There is no comment box, no caption, no photo, and no reply.
Because every field is a choice from a fixed list, a report is a fact pattern rather than an account. Two people reporting the same incident produce comparable records, and there is nothing for anyone to argue with in prose.
What happens to a report
A report from a verified account publishes immediately and counts at full weight. A report from an unverified device publishes after a fifteen-minute delay and counts at a quarter weight, which makes a burst of anonymous reports an expensive way to move a score and a slow one.
Other drivers can endorse a report, which adds to the count shown on it but does not change the score, or flag it. Three flags hide a report automatically, pending review by a human within 5 business days. Those two actions are the only things anyone can do to someone else's report.
You can delete your own report at any time, without asking us. It disappears from the feed, from the plate's Erk Score, and from anywhere a user can see it.
Looking up a plate
Enter a plate and a state. You get the reports currently standing against it and its Erk Score, or you get told the plate is clean. Most plates are clean — that is the ordinary result, not an error.
You can look up any US plate from the app, or from any of the 51 state pages.
What Jerk Alert will not do
Never, by design
- No owner lookups. We hold no DMV records, no registration data, and no commercial identity data. A plate is a vehicle, and that is where it stops.
- No free text. There is no field in the product where one member can type something another member will read.
- No photos. Reports carry no image attachment and never have.
- No contacting anyone. There is no messaging, no reply, and no way to reach a driver you reported.
- No live tracking. A report records where something happened, once. It does not follow a vehicle.
Following, approaching, or attempting to identify another driver is prohibited by the Terms and is grounds for removal. If a driver is an active danger, call 911 — Jerk Alert is a record, not an emergency service.
Reporting to the state instead
Jerk Alert is not a substitute for reporting a dangerous driver to the authorities, and for a serious incident you should do both. What your state actually lets a member of the public do varies enormously, and in a good many states the answer is nothing at all.
We researched all 51 US jurisdictions against their own agency pages and forms. Each state page sets out the route, the form, where to send it, and what happens to your name — or says plainly that no public route exists.
Get Jerk Alert freeJerk Alert LLC · How it works · Erk Score · Privacy & the law · Safety · States · Privacy · Terms · support@jerkalert.org