Driver fumes at 'very uncool' find on her car parked on suburban street
The woman was left fuming and now she has to work out how to get her car clean.
An Aussie woman has been left seeing red after discovering that someone had drawn on her car in what she claims is permanent marker, and she believes a child is to blame. The woman took to social media to vent her rage over the large blue scribble on the back of her Suzuki Swift which had been parked in Sydney at the time.
“Hey, to the parent who let their kids draw all over my car with a permanent marker, please contact me,” she posted on social media recently.
“This was not a nice surprise in the morning. I would have appreciated a note at least.”
Social media outrage
While it’s not clear why the woman thinks a child is responsible, the drawing does appear childlike and other social media users were quick to share her fury.
“Very uncool to the kids and especially their parents. I’d be livid,” one person wrote on Facebook. “This is what happens when parents don’t want to use the word no,” another said, while someone else described the act as “bad behaviour”.
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"Tough discipline needs to be dished out to kids, many have no boundaries, respect, common sense ... [and they are not] taught good manners,” commented another.
While someone else asked: “Why do you assume the parents sanctioned it?”
The scribble is a crime
New South Wales Police confirmed the scribble was in fact a crime, saying that marking any premises or property with a marker pen is illegal.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, a spokesperson highlighted the Graffiti Control Act, which states that “a person must not, without reasonable excuse, intentionally mark any premises or other property, unless the person has first obtained the consent”.
And graffiti laws can carry serious consequences.
According to Youth Law Australia, if you are charged for this crime and found guilty, a court can require you to undergo community service work, fine you up to $2,200, order you to pay the cost of repairing the damage, or send you to a children’s detention centre if you are a repeat offender.
So, how do you get it off?
Meanwhile the Suzuki driver has been left with a real problem on her hands.
“Does anyone have any suggestions to get it off?” she asked in her post. “I’ve tried drawing over with a whiteboard maker and alcohol wipes but the blue pigment is really stubborn and has stained the white paint.”
But according to Anita Birges, a cleaning and organising expert who runs her own business, Mise en Place, rubbing alcohol is the first step.
“If it's permanent marker, you get a rubbing alcohol, like an isopropyl, which you can pick up in Bunnings, and you're going to put it on a cloth and it's really important not to scrub really hard,” she told Yahoo News. “You don't want to be using anything abrasive. So no Magical Eraser on cars as it has a particle in it which can take off the paint.
“Then you would want to go to a nail polish remover. And again, you put a little bit on, and you don't really want to use cotton wool or a makeup pad for this, it’s much better to use like a microfiber cloth. And then [if that still doesn’t work] you can also use WD40.”
Birges did go on to add that “different manufacturers use different things in their paint and have different kinds of finishings”, so you've got to “just be really careful and do it like trial and error slowly”.
“Something that might work on one car, or a white car or a black car, might have a different effect on another,” she said.
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