Have you ever come out of the supermarket to find your car equipped with a fresh door ding? Or perhaps you’re getting ready to leave the parking lot at work and discover a brand new dent in the corner of your bumper thanks to a careless driver. Either situation makes your heart sink knowing that someone was wreckless enough to damage your car and not say a word. But what would you do if you could not only see exactly who damaged your car, but how they did it?
Meet Godwin Leung, a Canadian Tesla owner who happened to find himself in this very scenario. After leaving his Tesla Model 3 in a Park and Ride lot last weekend while he attended a football game, Leung returned to find brand new scratches along the side of his car.
Many people who find themselves in this kind of scenario would spend time wondering if some person had rubbed against their car and scratched the paint by accident, or if someone actually had malicious intent of damaging their vehicle for some reason. In Leung’s case, it was the latter, and it was all caught on film.
Specifically, the act was caught by his Tesla’s Sentry Mode, a vehicle monitoring system that uses the vehicle’s on-board cameras to record the car’s surroundings. In this case, the Tesla observed a man pulling up behind the car, keying it, and leaving. While the video shows how the damaged happened, Leung says that he’s not sure why his car was targeted.
“That was a pretty brazen thing to do. Broad daylight, a parking lot that’s pretty busy, it fills up really quickly,” Leung told local news. He later added, “Just ask him, what does this accomplish? What’s the point of what you’re doing?”
Leung noted that police warned him it was a long shot to find the man who keyed his car, but he hasn’t given up hope. His video has been posted to YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter to help find the culprit responsible for property damage.
While Sentry Mode has given drivers the peace of mind to know that their vehicles have another layer of passive security, it doesn’t always guarantee that vandals are caught. Multiple individuals have been recorded going to town on the glossy paint of Teslas this year, but only a few of them have been booked for the act. Perhaps the threat of being recorded will at least help to deter future vandals.