Jerk AlertPress Kit
Everything needed to write about Jerk Alert without emailing us first. Copy anything on this page verbatim. If you need something that isn't here, ask — we answer press mail same day.
Media contact
| Press contact | Ned Winter, Founder |
|---|---|
| support@jerkalert.org — put PRESS in the subject line | |
| Response time | Same day for press enquiries |
| Interviews | The founder is available for interviews, podcasts, and on-record debate on the ethics of public driving records. |
Boilerplate
Two lengths, both cleared for verbatim use.
Jerk Alert is a free Android app for logging and looking up driving behavior by license plate. A report is a plate, a location, one of 25 fixed categories and a severity rating — there is no free-text field, no photo upload and no reply, so there is nothing a member can type that another member will read. Plates identify vehicles, not people: the app runs no owner lookups and holds no DMV data. Reports roll up into a plate's Erk Score. Jerk Alert is made by Jerk Alert LLC, a New Mexico company, and is free with no advertising and no in-app purchases.
Jerk Alert is a free Android app that turns driving behavior into a public record, one license plate at a time. Somebody cuts you off; ten seconds later there is a structured report attached to that plate, visible to every other driver who looks it up.
What makes it unusual is what it deliberately cannot do. A report is assembled from four fixed inputs — a plate and state, a location chosen from a curated list, one of 25 preset behavior categories, and a severity from 1 to 5. There is no comment box, no caption, no reply, and no photo attachment. The vocabulary available for describing another driver is one the company wrote and publishes, which means it contains no slurs and no accusations of crime. Replies and image uploads were both considered and rejected before launch.
Plates identify vehicles rather than people. Jerk Alert performs no owner lookups, holds no DMV or commercial identity data, and never displays a poster's phone number. Reports can be flagged by anyone; three flags remove a report from public view automatically, pending human review within 5 business days. Authors can delete their own reports at any time, and deleted reports are erased permanently after 30 days.
Reports accumulate into an Erk Score, a running rating for each plate. The app also carries Tip of the Hat, a positive report for good driving, and renders all 51 US plate designs natively.
Jerk Alert is built by Jerk Alert LLC, a New Mexico limited liability company. The app is free, carries no advertising, has no in-app purchases and contains no advertising SDKs. It is rated 18 and over. An iOS version is planned.
One-line descriptions
- Tagline: Alert the jerk. Stay safe. Move on.
- Descriptor: A structured record of driving behavior, by license plate.
- Positioning line: Your driving isn't anonymous any more.
Fact sheet
| Product | Jerk Alert |
|---|---|
| Company | Jerk Alert LLC, a New Mexico limited liability company |
| Founded | 2026 |
| Headquarters | Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA |
| Platform | Android (Google Play). iOS planned. |
| Package | org.jerkalert.app |
| Price | Free. No advertising, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions. |
| Age rating | 18+ |
| Website | jerkalert.org |
| Play listing | [live at launch] |
| Report contents | Plate + state, curated location, 1 of 25 categories, severity 1–5. No free text, no photos. |
| Moderation | Flag on every report; auto-hide at 3 flags; human review within 5 business days |
| Retention | Deleted reports erased permanently after 30 days |
| Plate rendering | All 51 US plate designs, rendered natively in-app |
The story, if you want an angle
Three that hold up to scrutiny:
- The app with no comment section. Built in an era where every social product ships a text field and then spends years moderating it, Jerk Alert removed the field instead. The design argument is that the harassment lives in the free text, not the structured data.
- Public roads, public record. A restaurant is rated by strangers. A driver, doing something in full public view that affects everyone around them, is not. Jerk Alert asks why.
- Solo build. The whole product — app, API, website, and a rendering engine that reproduces all 51 US license plate designs from a calibrated per-state table — was built by one person.
Please don't write that we do these — we don't
- Owner lookups. Jerk Alert cannot tell you who owns a plate. No DMV access, no commercial identity databases.
- Photo uploads. There has never been one in the product.
- Public records aggregation. Every report is submitted by a driver who saw it happen. Nothing is scraped or purchased.
- Location tracking. Location is optional, approximate, foreground-only, and never attached to a report.
Full detail on the safety design: jerkalert.org/safety
Brand assets
Free to use in coverage of Jerk Alert. Please don't recolour or stretch the mark.
512×512 PNG
1024 × 500
Available at launch
phone, 6 frames
Available at launch
Need something specific — a founder headshot, a plate render, a higher-resolution mark? Email support@jerkalert.org.
Founder
Ned Winter is the founder of Jerk Alert. Winter has always been a dreamer. This project is an attempt to reconcile his love of his fellow human beings with the confusing experience of driving with them. He works from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is available for interviews, podcasts, and on-record debate about public driving records.
Usage
- Write the name as Jerk Alert — two words, both capitalised. Not "JerkAlert".
- The company is Jerk Alert LLC.
- The domain is jerkalert.org, not .com.
- A plate's rating is an Erk Score.
- Positive reports are a Tip of the Hat.
Safety & Accountability · Privacy Policy · Terms · support@jerkalert.org