Well, except for the fact that the property owners wanted my car there.
Back in the day, my now-husband returned from a night of clubbing to find his car towed. No problem, you see they don’t tow it back to the lot right away - you can sometimes walk around and find it.
In order to save time and get as many cars as possible, the tow company would tow the cars to a street a few blocks away and then the flatbed would come and pick them all up at once.
They got into the car and drove away.
I don’t think you actually read my post.
A tow truck driver generally isn’t towing someone as an agent of law enforcement. They are doing it as a private entity. They aren’t “investigating a crime scene” or anything of that nature, your characterization of towing as some sort of criminal enforcement action is just simply not accurate.
I’ve got one more suspect.
is it illegal for towing trucks to knowingly tow a car with someone inside?
I heard an urban legend where a “friend of a friend” saw his car being ready to be towed, asked the tow truck driver if he could get something inside. He then jumped in the car and locked the doors. Daring the tow truck driver to tow his car with him in it, because it is illegal. ?reckless driving? kidnapping? So it is a waiting game, where the tow truck driver decides it’s better to find another car to tow, and just unhooks the car.
Good story, but wondering if it could be true and useful to know.
I’ve heard that also.
But has anyone else heard the story about the tow truck taking away a car that had a baby inside. It was one of the cases where the mother was going into a store for just a minute, and when she came back the car was gone. The driver had apparently not seen the baby in there.
I seem to recall it happened a few years ago.
“Would be”? It already was.
I stubbed a toe once, but I’ve never beaten it!!
Oh. Well, in this part of my post:
I was discussing how do the POLICE get any convictions from a crime scene, or a towing, or frankly anything else, if the police’s standard of evidence is “we arrived after it happened and take no sides because we didn’t see it.” That’s the part of my post that used the term crime scene.
In this part of my post,
I admit that I did characterize tow truck drivers as exercising power to determine if a law was broken. But that’s because they actually do get to make a determination that I have or have not broken the law, and they actually do get to make it stick. Someone might, to make himself feel better, deny that that constitutes police powers, but if I randomly take property from people based on determinations I make, you can bet that I’ll be treated differently…because I don’t have police powers.
They may be representing a private entity – poorly, in the case I describe above, since they are working against the interests of the entity they represent and said entity’s guests, and only in the interest of their own profit – but while so doing, they are exercising real police powers.
I wouldn’t characterize towing a car as “police powers”. They’re not detaining you - they’re removing your property from a place where the property owner doesn’t want it to be. If someone came by and left a couch on your front lawn, would you be exercising “police powers” if you removed it? I get that the situation you were in (tenants gave you the wrong tag) sucks, but look at it from other side - if they don’t tow for expired parking tags, what’s to prevent people from giving away their old guest tags to allow more people than are permitted to park in the lot? They’ve got a deal with the property owner - any car displaying a valid parking tag has permission to be there, any other car, including one with expired tags, is not.
If you wish to follow through my advice is to pay to get your car back then file a small claims suit.
My friend was parked across the street from my apartment overnight once and her car was towed. The spot she was in was in front of another apartment building and there were no visible signs saying not to park there. She did have to pay to get her car back, but then she sued the person who had it towed (the manager of that apartment complex) and won because of the lack of signs, but the judge still only ordered the manager to reimburse her for half of the cost.
I, on the other hand, had to pay $300 towing and storage fees for my stolen car that was recovered and the cops couldn’t/wouldn’t wait a half hour for me to get there (it was the middle of the night and I had no car!) or leave it parked somewhere. Quite the scam the police have going for them with that (I believe they get kickbacks from the towing company). Don’t get me started on that!
My friend ‘beat’ a tow. After paying $75 in tow truck charges they unhooked and let her drive home.
Her car was parked on the road, she was at my birthday party (in February). The law is “no overnight parking, November 1-March 31”. But it was 10 o’clock at night! All the signs in town say “no overnight parking”, with no real times stated.
For some reason the town was trying to plow and her car was in the way, even though the road was plowed clear and it hadn’t snowed in days. I guess it was some late night clean up deal. The tow truck guy was nice enough to charge her the minimum show up charge, maybe because we called the police to help.