In Washington D.C., parking meters are allegedly out to destroy the human race as “out-of-order” meters are suddenly coming back to life and repairing themselves, leaving a number of motorists with “wrongful” parking tickets.

According to the D.C. Department of Transportation, 74% of more than 15,000 very old parking meters in D.C. are designed to self-correct themselves. This means if you park your car at a broken parking meter, there is a great chance that while you are gone, the meter will fix itself, resetting the time to say there’s zero left on the meter and leaving you stuck with a parking ticket.

In 2008 alone, there apparently had been a record of 116,354 calls to the D.C. Department of Transportation, complaining about such broken meters. When contacted, Jim Graham, chairman of the public works committee, said he was oblivious to the idea that dead parking meters had the ability to correct themselves. Sure, but then again, I can’t help but wonder if this is yet another traffic conspiracy. [NBCWashington via Geekologie]