What's the best way to get out of a parking ticket?

From moving a car by a couple of centrimetres, to blaming bowel movements, people told RNZ how far they'd go to get out of a parking ticket.

And over a third of the time it actually works, Wellington City Council data released to RNZ under the Official Information Act (OIA) shows.

Thousands of Wellingtonains try their luck to get out of tickets each year.

Numbers show the most successful way to get out of a parking ticket of council run spaces in Wellington was by saying there was a system error, or contesting the facts of the ticket itself.

This worked about 60 percent of the time, according to data from 2023 to 2025.