Towing is Extortion | Hacker News Reader

Towing is Extortion

notes.brianmayer.com

12 pointsbmmayer110 comments

I think some people are missing the key points of your argument - "If we are going to make towing the purview of municipal government, then the government has to actually step in and clear the roads, and those should be the only costs that people pay. If the city contracts out to a private monopoly, it is doing nothing more than creating a giant corporate subsidy."

You also mention that the fees are very large, especially for those who are not particularly well off. I think that's VERY to the point.

I also think that this penalty will hit the poor much harder than the rich. If you get a speeding ticket or other similar law infraction, the penalty you get is set by law. If you get towed, the penalty is set by the tow company and may end up being more than the cost of the car.

If you don't get it out of impound, and they auction it off and the value they get is less than the fees they have charged you, then they will attempt to extract the extra fees from you as well.

If you don't have 520 dollars on the first day it's towed, and you net less than 56 dollars / day (part time worker? High living expenses?) then every day goes by you're losing money and your car.

With most law violations, penalties can be appealed to a judge. In this case, they cannot - it's a private debt to a private agency. It's treated as though you asked for this 'service' and they delivered so you're required to pay them for it, even though this is patently ridiculous.

The end result is that someone who is poor or down on their luck or otherwise unable to scrape together several hundred dollars is penalized much more than a wealthy individual who can pay the fees immediately. This is a fundamental inequality in the way the law is enforced.

You admit you broke the law and that you were punished. Most other posters seem to think that's the main point. I think your main point is that the punishment should fit the crime. Running a red light or speeding by 20 mph may cause people to die, and both crimes carry a few hundred dollar fine. Your crime causes no chance of physical bodily harm to anyone, and carries a greater penalty, including potentially the immediate forfeiture of ones vehicle depending on whether one is wealthy enough.

*edited to include comparisons to other vehicle-based crimes.

This is a great point. Obviously a city needs towing, city workers need to be paid, and tow companies need to be paid. There's no problem with that but the fees are clearly outrageous and a form of hidden taxation, very regressive taxation. The towing company is obviously paying a fee to the city so they get a monopoly on vehicle tows.

Those posters calling the author a "douchebag" for complaining should understand that $520 + $100 is a form of regressive hidden taxation. Many workers in the bay area make less than that a week. A $600 surprise will literally break them and their families.

These hidden taxes disproportionately affect the poor, especially the working poor, who for example don't have driveways or who might wait a month or two on an inspection sticker.

Towing is a service that is provided to the city, not to you. It is provided to the city in order that they may conveniently and cost-effectively enforce the laws on the books. You took a calculated risk (which you admit), and you lost. I don't think $520 is unreasonable at all for someone who broke a law because he was (admittedly) too lazy / tired to care.

The city (unlike the mafia) does provide protection (a real police force and much more!) as well as many many many other services and benefits. One of those is having clear streets with available parking, and usable, clear private driveways for those who own property and pay taxes to the city.

Your self-described actions and your reaction to the situation strike me as incredibly... douchebaggy.

Agreed. If the penalty were cheaper, then you'd have people (such as OP) breaking parking laws more often.

The problem is the regressive nature of the fee. It's really not something that a normal person can afford to pay, which is scary considering how much people rely on their cars and how life-changing a one-time parking mistake can be to most people.

I'd take the mafia over what they have in SF any day. The mafia is significantly cheaper and they actually give better protection than the police. I used to live in the North End of Boston, an area which used to have little active police presence but was kept under the watchful eye of the "locals". All problems were taken care very quickly and there was no aggressive pan handling like you see in SF.

The $520 + other fees is clearly unreasonable and is a case of collusion with the single towing company.

> But let me ask you a question: isn’t $520 a ridiculously exorbitant fee to pay to get your own car back? ... the $520 tow fee, plus the $100 parking ticket, plus the $20 cab ride to get to the car lot before the $56.50 daily fee kicked in.

You answered your own question. You calculated it was worth risking a tow. Now, after getting bit, when you do the math, will the math be the same? I guess it depends whether you feel you can afford it.

> And the fact that the $520 towers showed up 4 minutes after the city gave me a $100 parking ticket–two punishments for the same crime–only makes me more sure that there is a close cooperation happening here.

Its not two punishments for the same crime. The $100 parking ticket is the punishment. Towing is just removing the problem that you have caused that the parking ticket punishes.

The fee to get your car back is paying, well, to get your car back after the city was forced to have it towed to fix the problem that you caused by parking where you weren't allowed to.

I'm stunned. Is the standard tow fee in SF really $520? I think if I ever had to pay that to get my property back I would pack up and leave the city. And I thought the $125 fee in my Texas city was exorbitant.

Yes. Ref: http://www.sfmta.com/services/permits-citations/booting-towi.... Although this says $472, they tacked on an extra $50 as a "service fee."

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