Jerk AlertSafety & Accountability
Jerk Alert is a structured record of driving behavior, not a forum. A report is a plate, a place, a category and a severity — there is nothing a member can type that another member will read. That single design decision removes most of what goes wrong on platforms like this one, and it was made before the first line of code.
The short version
- No free-text field anywhere. You pick from a fixed list. There is no comment box, no reply, no caption.
- No photos. Reports carry no image attachment and never have.
- Plates identify vehicles, not people. We run no owner lookups and hold no DMV or commercial identity data.
- Your phone number is never shown to anyone. Posts appear 100% anonymously.
- Flag anything. Three verified flags auto-hide a report; a human reviews it within 5 business days. If more verified reports of the same type come from other users, the reports may be reinstated.
- You can delete your own reports, any time, without asking us.
What a report actually contains
Every Alert is assembled from four fixed inputs, and nothing else:
Typed as it appears on the vehicle. Nothing is looked up from it.
Streets and places we maintain. Not typed, not your device's position or any specific address. It is part of the report and is public.
Tapped from a list. This is the whole of what the report says happened.
A number. Not a description.
That is the entire report. A member cannot attach a photo, cannot write a sentence, cannot name a person, and cannot reply to anyone else's report. The vocabulary available for describing another driver is one we wrote and publish, which means it contains no slurs, no accusations of crime, and no room to invent one.
Why there is no comment section
Replies were considered and rejected. On every product of this shape, the free-text field is where the harassment, the hate speech and the defamation live — not in the structured data, but in what people type next to it. Removing the field removes the vector, and it costs less than moderating it ever could.
The same reasoning covers photos. An image of a vehicle is also an image of whoever happens to be standing near it, and it is not something a fixed category list can constrain.
What Jerk Alert will not do
- Look up who owns a plate. No DMV access, no commercial identity databases, no reverse lookups. We could not tell you a name if you asked.
- Show anyone your phone number. We don't even keep it — it is stored only as a keyed one-way hash, used for verification, and never displayed.
- Track where you go. Location is optional and approximate, read only while the app is open, and kept as no history. The location on a report is a place you pick from a list — public, like the rest of the report — and never your device's position. Turn on nearby-Alert notifications and we store your latest approximate fix so we know what counts as nearby; nothing more.
- Sell your data. No advertising SDKs, no trackers, no data sharing for advertising. The app is free and carries no ads.
- Help you confront anyone. The Terms prohibit using Jerk Alert to follow, approach, or identify another driver.
If a report about your vehicle is wrong
Email support@jerkalert.org. We review removal requests and give you a decision within 5 business days. You do not need an account to ask, and you do not need to prove you own the vehicle to have the report examined.
The Terms require first-hand observation and prohibit posts made to retaliate, harass, or settle a score. A report that breaches that comes down and the account that posted it can be banned.
Removal will be based on several factors, including age and activity of the accounts that have made reports. If your plate has just a single report, we will likely remove it, but if it continues to receive reports of a similar nature, they will stand, and the original will be reinstated.
How moderation works
- Flag — every report carries a flag control, in the app and on the web.
- Auto-hide at three flags — the report leaves public view immediately, before any human has looked at it, and waits for review.
- Human review within 5 business days — against an SLA clock, with removal and account bans as available outcomes, and an audit trail of every decision.
- Delete your own — authors can remove their own reports without asking us. A deleted report leaves public view straight away and is erased permanently after 30 days.
Is this vigilantism?
No, and the design is the argument. Vigilantism requires a target you can identify and an action you can take against them. Jerk Alert gives you neither: it will not tell you who owns a vehicle, it gives you no way to contact anyone, and it prohibits approaching another driver in the Terms you accept at sign-up.
What it does is make a pattern visible. A single bad merge is noise. The same plate appearing repeatedly, logged independently by people who do not know each other, is information — the same kind of information a restaurant's rating carries, about a thing that happens in public, on roads everyone shares.
Who it's for
Jerk Alert is for adults, 18 and over. It is a record-keeping tool. If you are in danger on the road, call your local emergency number — not us.
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