Have you ever pulled up to a metered parking spot and found that the driver who just left the space still had time left on the meter? It’s like getting free money, especially if that leftover time is enough for you to run your errand without having to feed the meter. But the folks in Denver are testing out new sensors that would delete any remaining time when you drive away from the meter.

“They can sense when a car pulls up and then leaves. They can let us know how long people are actually staying,” a rep for the city’s Department of Public Works tells Denver’s CBS4 about the sensors, which are embedded in the road in front of the meters.

In addition to wiping out the leftover time on the meter, he adds that these sensors are helping the city to collect helpful data about drivers’ parking habits: “If there’s a certain stretch of the street that’s a lot more popular say than the next block over.”

Right now, Denver is only testing 500 of these sensors. It hasn’t decided if/when it will roll them out to all of the city’s 6,300 meters.

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