Historically speaking, Australians love pushing the limits on how long they can park for and where they choose to park.
It's evident in the fact that Australian residents managed to score a total of 1,380,944 parking fines in the 2023–2024 financial year.
But if you’re keen on pushing the limits of parking, this Tesla owner may have just come up with the best life hack ever.
Posted to the Tesla Owners Australia Facebook page, the owner attached a video saying, “It actually pays off to have premium so you can have the live view to suss out how long you can be parked based on the time of marking”.
The video shows a parking inspector marking the tyres of their vehicle, a common practice to know exactly what car was parked when they inspected the street.
The live sentry feed is part of Tesla’s “Premium Connectivity” package, which is a $9.99 per month subscription service through the Tesla app. A package was introduced following Tesla’s cancellation of free music streaming and internet connectivity at the end of 2024.
It includes other features such as video streaming, an internet browser, music streaming, and a karaoke mode. Still, most importantly, it gives you live access to all the cameras surrounding your car via your phone.
The user wasn’t the first to discover this life hack, as others had previously shared funny experiences with parking inspectors.
“I did make it break wind on one of them once,” said one commenter.
“Get on sentry and use the microphone to say ‘thanks officer',” said another.
The feature is particularly useful following the 2024 mandate requiring physical parking fines on vehicles instead of a ‘ticketless’ approach. The bill, first proposed in March 2024 and finally passed on November 13th, flat-out bans all 128 councils in NSW from issuing a parking fine unless a photo is taken of the offence and a physical ticket is left on the car.
The bill further states: "Without this intervention, it is reasonably expected that the number of ticketless fines would continue to increase significantly. This would further erode community trust and confidence in the parking system".
But, it might not always save you from getting stung with a near $200 parking fine.
How do parking inspectors know how long a car has been parked for?
Parking inspectors will employ various tactics to prevent incorrect fines and hand out ones to those who have overstayed the parking limit. The most common and historic method is to mark the top of the tyre with chalk. Then, if you’re parked in, say, a 2P, they will come back in two hours and inspect the tyres.
However, with the explosion of technology, they do have other methods. One thing we have observed is that the inspector will take a photo of the street and then take a photo of each car parked on the street. Then they will return in the specified time zone, cross-reference the photos with cars parked on the street at that time, and all this will happen without you ever knowing they marked your car.
Some major councils have also begun introducing pressure plates in the ground that can actually sense when you arrive in that spot. We explored this new technology at length here.
Zane Dobie comes from a background of motorcycle journalism, working for notable titles such as Australian Motorcycle News Magazine, Just Bikes and BikeReview. Despite his fresh age, Zane brings a lifetime of racing and hands-on experience. His passion now resides on four wheels as an avid car collector, restorer, drift car pilot and weekend go-kart racer.
