Melbourne driver spots lucrative mistake on parking sign: '5 hours free'
A motorist has scored five hours free parking after taking advantage of a typo on a Melbourne sign.
The picture of the erroneous sign was shared to social media, with the excited motorist declaring they found "free parking on William St" in the CBD.
The sign indicates two hours of permit parking in this particular spot, between 7.30pm and 8.30pm from Monday to Saturday.
People were quick to pick up on the times not really making sense, given it is two-hour parking and suggesting this could be a typo, with the intended start time to actually be 7.30am.
The person who parked in the spot said they left their car there for five hours and came back to find a fine wasn't left.
"Just left the park with no ticket. 5 hours free!" they said.
"Noticed that the sign that bookends the parking zone has the correct timings.. it says AM rather than PM, but where I parked you can't see that sign, only this one."
Just to be safe, they took a photo of their car parked there, along with the sign, in case they cop a parking fine.
Some were delighted to see the small mistake on the sign.
"Whoever made this sign deserves a medal," they said.
"You Found Free Parking... I think I better lay down, I am feeling a little fizzy," someone said.
The City of Melbourne told Yahoo News Australia it is aware of the mistake and will be correcting it as soon as possible. The council confirmed the sign should read 7.30am, and not 7.30pm.
Should we just switch to 24-hour time?
A few people in the comments of the post suggested we should just switch to 24 hours time, to avoid such ambiguity.
"I don't understand why we as a society haven't switched 24-hour time," someone said.
"The maths isn't really that much more complicated and it eliminates so much ambiguity."
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Others seemed to think 24-hour time is a little more confusing for some, unless you grew up learning it.
"The only reason it seems more complicated is because people not used to it have to convert it to am/pm in their head first," they argued.
"If you grow up with it, or use it constantly you can think in 24hr time and no conversion is necessary."
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