Built from real NYC parking-violation records — NYC Open Data dataset pvqr-7yc4 (~7.6M tickets across all five boroughs), via the city's Socrata API, aggregated by block (house-number range), day, hour and violation type. Street/block shapes from NYC's official Street Centerline (with address ranges); posted meter hours/rates from NYC ParkNYC block faces (nearest metered face to your pin); licensed garages & lots from NYC DCWP; address search by NYC GeoSearch. The % is an estimate = tickets issued on your block during the chosen window ÷ that block's legal parking spots (from its real length), over your parking duration. Meter fines: $65 in Manhattan at/below 96th St, $35 in Upper Manhattan & the outer boroughs ($115 if a personal car uses a commercial-loading meter). The pay-or-risk verdict compares only the meter-ticket risk (the one thing paying the meter prevents) against the meter price; other ticket types — street-cleaning, hydrant, no-standing — are shown separately because you face them whether you pay or not. That meter risk is the "if you don't pay" chance: the raw rate counts tickets across all parked cars (most of whom paid), so we divide by an assumed ~1 in 4 metered cars being unpaid at a time to get a non-payer's true odds — an estimate, since the data has tickets issued, not payments. The headline % stays the average across all parkers. The data-confidence tag reflects how many tickets/yr the block actually has — thin blocks give noisier estimates. Reflects historical enforcement, not a guarantee — always read the posted signs.