KINGSTON UPON HULL, England, April 13 (UPI) — A British couple’s parking ticket was canceled after their dashboard camera recorded a traffic officer moving a cone before writing the citation.
Harvey and Stacey Saunders said they installed a dashboard camera in their car after incurring a pair of suspicious parking fines and the camera was recording when a traffic warden placed a ticket on the car April 6.
The video shows the traffic warden moving a traffic cone from in front of the Saunders’ car to the back of the car before writing a parking ticket and placing it on the vehicle.
“I returned a few hours later to find my car was suddenly parked in a coned-off no-parking zone and I had a ticket,” Harvey Saunders told the BBC.
Stacey Saunders posted the video, which bears an incorrect time stamp, to Facebook, where it went viral with thousands of shares.
Harvey Saunders said he encountered the same traffic warden later in the same day.
“I actually caught up with him a little later, purely by accident, he was still in the area,” he told the Hull Daily Mail. “I asked him about what he had done and he said, and I quote ‘well you shouldn’t have parked there should you.'”
“I told him I had recorded him moving the cone, and I was recording him now. That’s when he went mad,” he said.
A spokesman for the Hull City Council said officials canceled the citation after viewing the video.
“When we need to suspend parking bays temporarily we place portable cones on the road or footpath. Unfortunately, people moving them is not uncommon, as happened in this case which can result in us taking enforcement action,” the spokesman said. “The officer was correct to return the cone to the original location but not to use it as evidence to issue a ticket in this instance. We have contacted the motorist concerned and the ticket will be rescinded. An investigation is under way.”
