Did a search, and couldn’t find anything in the archives on this.
When your car is towed, how do you find this out? You park your car someplace, go about your business, and return several hours later to find it gone. What now? My first thought would probably be that it had been stolen.
I guess it matters where you’re parked. Private lots usually have (somewhere) a sign with the towing company’s phone number on it. How about if you’re parked on a city street? When you call the cops to report a theft, would then they cheerily tell you that it’s down at the Yard?
If they tow your car and never let you know, then they have stolen it, haven’t they? :mad:
I think that many American cities have a procedure in place whereby if you report your car stolen to the police, they check to see if it has been towed. This of course requires accurate record-keeping by the police as to which cars have been towed.
In a city like New York, where billions of cars are towed every day, this is presumably pretty difficult. I had a friend whose car disappeared in New York, and when she reported it to the police, they told her to call one or more impound lots to see if the car was there. Of course, even if the guy at the impound lot says the car is not there, you still can’t know for sure. And if you don’t claim your car within a certain amount of time, I believe it can be seized or auctioned or something like that.
I suppose that the best defense is to park legally. In addition, New Yorkers know many sneaky tricks to avoid getting their cars towed. For example, many tow truck drivers won’t tow a car if there are crutches or a wheelchair in the car. Also, if there is a pet in the car it likely won’t be towed. IMHO, some of these tricks are ethically troubling to say the least.
Interesting story. I dont know about other places but here when they tow your car they don’t take it to “the yard” right away. That’s too far and a waste of time. So they move each car to a street a few blocks over then, once they are all there, move them to the “yard”. They have more time because most owners will just assume the car is already impounded. My boyfriend and his friend have searched out his car after a night out and simply got in and drove it away.
This is standard practice in Winston-Salem, NC (town motto: Shirt and shoes optional, smoking required), where I lived for a while. I-40 goes right through downtown and there is virtually no breakdown lane anywhere along a 2 or 3 mile stretch. Consequently, when a car needs towing off the interstate along that stretch, they send in one of those old-style hitch-em-up wreckers to yank it out PDQ, delivering it to a big field east of downtown where the two directions of travel on the interstate spread apart, leaving a field of about 2 acres. There, the cars wait until a big flatbed or a transport truck can haul them to the breakdown pokey.
I live about a mile from the Triborough Bridge in Astoria (Queens)–the Daily News just ran a story that more than half a million cars go by the Hoyt Ave. exit (just before the bridge) every day.
How do I know if my car is towed, not stolen? Simple, it’s not where I parked it.
A couple of years ago I parked my car overnight where I thought it was legal to do so. When I returned it was gone. Thinking it was stolen, and in a panic, I asked a nearby doorman if he had seen anything suspicious. No, he said. He asked what kind of car I had. A 1991 Ford Tempo, I replied. He chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, it was towed… nobody steals old Tempos!”
Of course he was right, and his otherwise stinging remark has comforted me the many times I have parked in so-so neighborhoods. It’s also given me the assurance that, if my car is missing, I should triple-check the parking signs and call the car pound, not the police; it’s been towed not stolen.
Regarding New York City public parking and towing…
If you park in Manhattan, there is pretty much only one impound lot (and it’s huge), so it will cut down on the number of phone calls.
The things I have learned the hard way.
The impound lot doesn’t open until around 5AM and closes somewhere around 9PM. Also, it is not open on Sundays. According to my twisted logic, this means that if you don’t mind getting tickets, you can park anywhere you feel like on Sundays and also between 9PM to 5AM on other days, because the tow trucks would have nowhere to tow your car.
On the other hand, if you are parked illegally during the times that the lot is open, expect your car to be towed if you are in a high traffic area. I’ve seen trucks out at 5:30 AM and they seem to be pretty quick in getting a car out of the parking spots.
I’ve also had friends park their cars for about 5 minutes (of course this was on a very heavily trafficked road) and come back to find the car towed.
Oh, by the way, yes we do have 50-100 cars apiece. When your car is stolen, where do you think it goes?
And, the last time I checked the hours of the impound lot was about 5 years ago. Since then, I’ve been parking my 50-100 cars in the many garages that New York has.
Hey, Bri, I think you may be due for a rude awakening soon. I’ve been to the Manhattan pound a lot later than 9pm and the tow trucks were dragging in hapless autos fast and furious.
Furthermore, a good friend lives on one of those “midnight restriction” blocks, where parking is prohibited from, say, 12m to 5am; this is a relatively new, but not uncommon, thing that sleeploving residents who live near nightclubs and bars love. On some nights, around 11:45, a line of tow trucks assemble and wait to pounce. At midnight they go in for the kill – much to the utter delight of my buddy who, before the restrictions, would be awakened nightly by loud, drunken, belligerant morons from the club up the block as they walked to their cars. Now when they stagger out and yell, “Holy shit! Where’s my SUV!!!”, he doesn’t mind as much.
All those late night violators got to go somewhere, Bri! Be careful, buddy.
Stuyguy, thanks for the warning! Fortunately, I’ve since moved to the burbs and don’t have to worry about that. Also, when we were really having troubles, it was about 4-5 years ago, and we had a real beater that we didn’t mind leaving on the streets. We quickly sold that car (couldn’t stand the constant tickets and moving of the car for street cleaning). When we finally got a new car, we put it in a garage. I cringe about leaving a car on the street now.
Yes, the crime is down, but the city still has to make money somehow…
I know this is a hijack attempt, but this thread brought back a question I’ve always wondered about: what if you had your own 4 Denver boots and put them on your wheels wherever you parked?
In NYC, they’re supposedto notify the local precinct when a car is towed.By the way, just because you can’t pick up the car between 9 pm and 5am doesn’t mean cars don’t get brought in. It just means no one’s there to take your money( towing fee and ticket if I remember right)
They put a sticker about the size of a sheet of paper on the ground that lets you know you’ve just been hit for about $600 in towing and storage fees. Of course, most gaijin don’t know they leave the sticker and even if you do it’s all in kanji so you can’t read it even if you know it’s somewhere under the car that’s now parked where yours was a few hours ago.
BTW, there are two major divisions of plates here. “Y plates” plates for SOFA status personnel (American military and military-base employeed basically); and “kanji plates” for the locals.
If two cars, one Y and one kanji, are parked illegally behind one another, guess which one gets towed?
