You know what’s worse than someone taking your parking space at the mall? When they take your space and block your driveway at your own home or business. One Australian has apparently solved this tricky problem in a delightfully watery way.
As covered by 9Now, the system is the creation of Rockhampton local Bruce Kerr. Kerr operates an IT business in the town, and has long suffered with customers of neighboring businesses intruding on his driveway. Signs did little to deter this bad behavior.
Kerr’s solution was to install a sprinkler system, giving offending parkers the soaking of their life. “Block the gate, meet your fate,” said Kerr.
It’s a neat way to manage problem parkers. It doesn’t do any damage, but it makes it more than clear to the offenders that they’re not supposed to be blocking this drive.
The system is not automated. Instead, Kerr keeps a close eye on the driveway via surveillance cameras and triggers it manually to soak offending drivers. “From all the cameras we’ve got, we’re pretty quickly alerted when someone’s parked there and so we flick a switch,” Kerr explained to 9Now. “We don’t even have to actually leave our desks to do that.”
Responses from the public have been aggressive, at times. Footage captured by Kerr includes soakees flipping the bird, ripping off the parking signs, or trying to tear down the sprinkler itself.
It would actually be trivial to automate the system if so desired. A cheap single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi can run image recognition algorithms quite easily, identifying humans and vehicles where they’re not supposed to be. Hook one of these up to a solenoid valve in line with the sprinkler, and you’ve got a set-and-forget driveway defense system.
However, there is a caveat to automation. It would be relatively trivial to cause trouble by simply triggering the system and standing there indefinitely. Or, if you don’t like getting wet, a convincing mannikin could stand in for you. This would cause excess water use, costing the owner money, and potentially even turn the driveway into a mudbath. Indeed, in video shared on Tiktok by Rockhampton Chaos, one cheeky local took advantage of the sprayer to cool off during recent hot weather.
@rockhamptonchaos One of Rockhampton’s biggest attractions ????
@rockhamptonchaos “Why don’t you report it to the council?”… The local council ????
Kerr’s solution might seem over the top, but the way he tells it, he was left with little other option. “The council can’t do anything, we tried sending number plates to police and what not, that didn’t seem to have any effect,” he told A Current Affair. “That’s when we started the water works.” Indeed, there’s even a video of a police vehicle blocking the driveway and getting a hosedown. For now, the sprinkler just runs on mains water pressure. However, Kerr has plans to go further. “With the multi-stage centrifugal [pump], we’re gonna crank that up to 55 to 58 psi.”
Of course, one might question whether Kerr’s sprinkler system is actually achieving its intended goal. It does seem to encourage people to leave the driveway rather than blocking it in some cases. However, overall, the sheer number of videos online suggest that the cars keep coming, water or no.
@rockhamptonchaos “Why don’t you report it to the police?” The police ????????
♬ GTA San Andreas Theme (Remake) – Ben Morfitt (SquidPhysics)
Ultimately, though, those blocking Kerr’s driveway will likely find little sympathy for their misdeeds, no matter how wet they get. Karma is often most appreciated when it’s instant and righteous.
Image credits: David Aaron via YouTube screenshot
Given how much time employees evidently spend distracted by this issue, wouldn’t a peon with a vest, a lawnchair, and an umbrella be cheapest? Just plop down in the driveway and move only for vehicles actually needing ingress/egress. A camera phone aimed at any would-be violators would surely keep them from being run over.
Next steps: Spike strips and lucrative contracts with predatory towing services.
If that doesn’t work? Release the hounds!
Also lasers. Preferably very powerful CO2 lasers emitting wavelengths that that can’t be seen with the naked eye. That way the paint magically burning off to reveal the word “ASSWIPE!!” (or any word, phrase or image of your choice) in bare metal followed by the tires exploding looks like divine retribution.
Move the fence out 5 meters .Cost would be prohibitive and what fun would that be?
Back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s the family business had a small parking area behind the store surrounded on 3 sides by buildings off a narrow one-way alley. You could not see it from the main street, but people would park there all the time blocking the warehouse and building doors. Dad would have loved this idea 🙂
“One of Rockhampton’s biggest attractions”- Caption writer knew exactly what they were doing.
Fucking brilliant, LOL, Ozzies are my favorite people.
One mod I’d make is to auto-disable the sprinkler system if the gate is open. Saves on unintended showers for owners/customers.
Just imagine the amount a damage it would cause to a convertible if their top was down. Wonder if the could sue him for the damage?
I have to wonder though, don’t they have towing companies in Australia?
Towing charges and impound fees are paid by the towed, not by the business. And it can be immediate depending on how predatory the towing company is.
Yep, there’s a tavern I like to go to that is situated in a residential neighborhood (there several in that area actually) but this sits right next door to another that has very limited parking. And due to it being residential, parking in general is a commodity. The tavern however has the luxury of a large parking area (the only one of the 5 bars in that area that does). They have signs posted that parking is for their customers only and if you park there and go to the neighboring bar, you will be towed.
They have their system down to a T. They have outdoor area that sits right next to the parking area, so they have a hostesses who serve the outdoor area and also watch the parking lot like hawks. They also have a local tow company on blast, so the second they see someone park in their lot and then go around the fence to the bar next door, the call the tow company. They are fast too. I’ve seen it numerous times and watched within ten minutes of the illegal parking, the car being hauled off. I think the person doing the towing actually lives in the neighborhood, they are that quick (that or they just have a tow truck on standby nearby). In any case, it always ends the same, an hour or so later the person returns to find their car gone.
That’s.. not how towing works..
If you have a business with a parking lot, towing companies will try to compete for your business, you don’t pay them anything, they get paid by the ppl who have to get their car out of the impound.
Manual operation makes sense, I would imagine that the owner occasionally allows people to very temporarily stop here; think deliveries, services, etc. You also probably don’t want to be spraying down an elderly lady who barely knows what’s going on, even if they shouldn’t be driving in the first place.
Overall I’m a fan of the concept, though I bet there’s been a few instances where the person who pulled in did so with no intention of actually parking, and got blasted. It just being a spraydown with water seems like the appropriate level of punishment, it’s a nuisance for the offender without being excessively punitive. I like it.
Should be easy to tell the difference. Did you stop and get out of the vehicle?
I’m picturing a “my car is full of bees!” scenario. Though I guess if that’s the case, I’ll take the water spray.
Weird things happen, and misunderstandings are guaranteed. While I understand most of these people deserve their spray, I’m sure there’s a few people who have taken a hit and didn’t really deserve it.
But look at all the cool utes and pickups!
I think is a good idea to add some color to the water like dark brown to mimic sewer water along a poop emoji to add more dramatic visual effect.
Why stop at visual? Add sound and olfactory effects too!
Why stop at “mimic”? Actual sewer water is free!
Hook the sprinkler system up to a sewer line. Spray them with piss. That’ll get ’em out real fast, and they won’t stand there to just cool off!
Idea for an addition, some laser pointers and a speaker with a warning and a countdown.
Save water.
Use poison darts instead.
BTW – What is this “Mall” place you speak of?
You could automate this, or you could savour the sweet, sweet joy of doing it manually. I know which side of the fence I’m sitting on
Absolutely. Plus, you might actually have someone authorized coming in to park, visitor or plumber or whatever. Doing it manually must be so goddamn satisfying. Bravo.
Free car washes, too!
This is the type of content that my passive-aggressive soul feeds on.
I live near a day care & the amount of people who block my driveway or my neighbors’ driveway, even when it’s sunny out & there’s plenty of other drivers, is fucking staggering.
I’d love to get an “ill-aimed” sprinkler system but I wonder how I could avoid spraying the kids being picked up & dropped off.
Maybe I’ll just call the non emergency like of the local PD & have them ticketed…
Some people would just call those kids acceptable casualties
I used to live in Braintree MA (still live close just in a different town) and there was a location of a coffee shop called Mary Lou’s that was in an old house just in a neighborhood in Braintree, and the neighboring house, a private residence, had a driveway that was just 3 parking spaces directly off the street.
Here’s the map link for those curious – https://maps.app.goo.gl/EABtJWFZRcKgVV558
There were signs saying don’t park there, that it wasn’t Mary Lou’s lot, and to not block it. Without fail, people would park there to get their coffee cause otherwise you had to park on the street or behind the business and walk all of 50 feet. Even in the street view there are 3 cars parked in driveway and I’d bet money they don’t all belong to the house lol. People are so goddamn self-centered.
Slash the tires. That will get the point across.
We’ve got a situation like that near me – back in the 1940s, a developer built a neighborhood of houses and a shopping center with apartments above the stores, but kept one, tiny strip of land for themselves. It housed a temporary office trailer during construction of the neighborhood, then a permanent office building, which they used themselves for a few decades, until they were bought out/merged/liquidated, etc, and that building on its tiny parcel was sold off to new owners
Problem is, they drew the boundaries just barely around that building, there’s only enough room to tandem park two cars directly in front of it, which was apparently all the construction company needed, and the building has since been converted into a garage that has housed an oil change shop and a detailing business in recent years, so obviously there’s a need to park a lot more cars than that. They started parking at the neighboring shopping center/apartment building, basically taking over the whole lot, the owners and tenants of that building went to court, and, amazingly, a county judge ruled that, because the shopping center and office building had both once been part of the same larger parcel, the original developer probably intended for the lot to be used by both, so employees and customers of the shop should be able to use it, even though it’s owned by someone else
Caused a big problem, especially when the shop also took over the service alley/loading dock space behind the shopping center with a series of tents and temporary carports, blocking deliveries to businesses. It also technically means every single driveway of every house in the surrounding neighborhood is also legally a public parking lot, since they were also all built by the same developer out of the same originally larger parcel
“amazingly, a county judge ruled that, because the shopping center and office building had both once been part of the same larger parcel, the original developer probably intended for the lot to be used by both, so employees and customers of the shop should be able to use it, even though it’s owned by someone else”
I smell a kickback!
Brilliant, we have a couple of schools that suffer the same issues with local residents vs parent parking. Unfortunately, living in AL, some people back in the 60s ruined anyone’s casual use of water for crowd control. The imagery is just…not good.
Most schools have swapped to bullets now.
Right. I mean, you wouldn’t want to cause and uproar by using water!
Unless it’s cold out, kids usually welcome a good soaking.
Glitter cannon!! The kids would love it, but the parents would HATE it.
Might be even more effective if the kids did get wet – the howls and screams would be a pretty good future deterrent.
Further proof that people don’t read signs. Doesn’t matter how big and blinky they are. Want a human to stop doing something convenient for them? Need to dig into some hard core behaviour modification.
Oh, they read them, they just don’t care
Two words: glitter cannon.
Two words: naval artillery
There’s no reaction like an overreaction!!
“Temper Temper”
Two more words: glitter claymore
2.5 words: Barrel o’ lube.
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Lubes-Natural-Water-Based-Lubricant/dp/B005MR3IVO
Lube is brilliant because they’d have a hard time gripping the door handle to get back in the car.
OR flame thrower
Install remotely operated tire spikes like the rental car companies. Pull in and you get four flat tires. Yes it blocks the drive but they won’t do it a second time.
It keep them there till the tow truck arrives. Then they get hefty fees on top of needing new tires.
While clearly not as entertaining, a few traffic cones would do the trick.
Those are pretty easy to run over. I’ve done it by accident over my own occasionally.
I was thinking along the lines of the 24” tall cones with reflectors and weighted bottoms.
I will say that I love the sprinkler idea, but the glitter cannon comment above is the chef’s kiss.
As someone who has previously been tasked with parking enforcement at a couple different businesses, I can absolutely tell you that they would not. People do not mind running over or removing traffic cones to park in places that they have no business parking. Some of them are so brazen as to toss the cones into their vehicle.
Can’t say I’ve ever experienced that! We do use the tall cones with weighted bottoms, but maybe things are different here in Minneapolis. 😉
We called those candlesticks and they mostly just get moved. I don’t think anyone threw one of those in the vehicle and they rarely get run over. But people will just blatantly move them out of the way to park wherever they feel entitled to a space. When asked, they will say it wasn’t blocked when they got there (at least until you show them the video of them moving cones). Maybe it’s just an Idaho thing or a tech worker thing.
It’s probably also relevant that the worst penalties we were authorized to use were emails to supervisors. If someone didn’t move their vehicle for the work being performed (after being contacted and warned), we could get it towed…to another space as close as possible, at the company’s expense. Not a lot of reason to respect the rules.
A raspberry pie, some motion detectors, Wi-Fi board and camera, games controller, a battery powered motorized platform for the cone, a cattle prod and the cones. Endless fun chasing the Mis-Parker’s around and shocking them. Build a half dozen parking protection daleks.
“It would actually be trivial to automate the system if so desired.”
Sure, you could automate it but that would take all the fun out of it.
Right? This set up is a grumpy retired guy’s dream.
“Right? This set up is a grumpy
retiredguy’s dream.”I could do this all day and I’m far from retired.
This is brilliant
Why not hire a tow truck to remove said offenders?
From the looks of it, you’d need several tow trucks working in rotation
In my city, the towing companies charge $1000 plus the daily fee, something like $150, to get your car back after you illegally park. Here they would have no problem getting a rotation of tow trucks.
Also tow trucks can take a while to show up. I’ve waited a couple of hours for a tow in similar circumstances.
I think in his case, he should be able to contract with a company. I mean based on the daily number of offenses, that could be most of a small tow companies (1 or 2 trucks) entire daily workload, and be quite profitable.
What he likely needs is retractable bollards, though I bet someone would just parallel park in front of his driveway at that point.
Or use the retractable bollards in the same manner as the water, retract them, wait for someone to park, then activate the bollard and have a very high centered vehicle. And then spray the crap out of the person as they stand there trying to figure out what just happened.
Or just extend the bollard back in place after they are through. Then close up shop for the day and go home.
Sure, it doesn’t let you use your gate for a while, but it would be fun to strand them there.