In many countries, parking outside the lines of a parking space probably won’t get you into much trouble, if any. Things are a little different in China, however, where authorities have started attaching large suction cups to vehicles in an effort to shame residents into parking correctly.
We’re not sure how widespread this approach is as China is a massive country with almost two dozen provinces that probably all have different parking regulations. However, we did stumble across a photo of what the large suction cup looks like as well as a video posted to the Chinese TikTok that shows parking officers attaching it.
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The large suction cup is stuck to the door of a car that’s parked incorrectly and attached to a cord that wraps around the wing mirror, presumably to ensure it doesn’t fall to the road if the suction cup loses its grip. Found within the device is a timer and a GPS and residents can only have it removed once they pay a parking fine. The timer is used to track how many days it has been attached and the fine increases accordingly.
According to a Reddit member, authorities will use the GPS functionality to track the offending driver if they do not pay the fine.
It is understood that the suction cup is more meaningful than a simple parking fine because of the social embarrassment that comes with driving around with it stuck to the car. Tire Meets Road states that this approach is likely to be more effective in certain Asian cultures than it would be in the United States, for example.