Hopefully this spreads just as fast as hands-free cell phone driving laws.

Perhaps people shouldn't park illegally/improperly, then they wouldn't have to worry about getting towed. It seems that bills like this make it OK for people to break the rules, because it's just not fair to punish them for doing so. It's not OK to park illegally/improperly just because you'll only be a minute/delivering meals/in a rush/more important than everyone else. I hate these kinds of things because it essentially makes it OK for people to not follow the rules, and because these things make it more difficult to enforce said rules.

Finally.

Really, what idiot in the state house let it get like this to begin with?

(Wait. This is government we're talking about. Never mind.)

Some people, like the 2nd poster, are missing the point. A lot of the time, people are towed while LEGALLY parked, doing nothing wrong. An example is the story about the guy at starbucks. These towing scum decide to come in and randomly tow cars with little or no warning, even when they are legally parked. Down with predatory towing!

@Pylon83: But there's no evidence that the examples we've seen were breaking the rules. They were both parking in private parking lots to use the facility that owns the lot, and they were in full compliance with signage. These weren't people who were assuming their breach would go unnoticed if they kept it short. It's just that the towing company is financially rewarded for towing people even if they're compliant.

He may have yabbered something about an "an incentive-based system to perform." Regardless, the effect is the same.

This is the same situation that Wall Street was in before the collapse. Thinking about instant gratification (money/short term goals), without regards for the future, consequences, or victims of their actions, until of course the day of reckoning comes and they lose all the toys they amassed from their nefarious actions.

Nobody else reacting to the "any car, any time" bit?

The way I read, he says he approves towing of random cars, parked legally or not.

@Yankees368: I don't think he misses the point as much as he purposefully dodges it.

@Pylon83: If you don't give exceptions to delivery drivers, how can they deliver? Park 5 blocks over and walk outside in the cold rain with hot food? They aren't trying to park, they just want to drop something off and go.

It's also not always about being parked illegally. Sometimes places require permits to park. What sense does it make for a delivery driver to get a permit to park when he just delivers things?

Also would you want to place these same rules on fedex and ups? Because if they could not double park, delivery would be impossible.

@Pylon83: Well at an old folks home maybe a private ambulance company will be parking illegally and people could die. Towing is a last resort, not a first choice. The driver has INCENTIVE to grab any car at any time. What would happen if it is the property owner,or a police officer who is in an unmarked car? Towing should be a last resort.

@Pylon83: Illegal is one thing, improperly as you put it is another. I assume you mean parking on private property in a way that violates the signage. In that case improper parking is ultimately defined by the owner/manager and I dont see whats wrong with requiring the tow truck driver to ok it with someone in charge when dealing with a private lot.

@Dracoster: try reading it again, especially the part after the part your referring to :)

So what's the 100% libertarian view on this? It seems to me that if a company is expected to do something too specific, they get overzealous. Maybe if the company was responsible for maintaining the roads, parking spaces and traffic throughput, it'd be better. Or is there a natural system that stops this kind of thing from happening, even with companies that just tow?

@Pylon83: Yes, but in some of these cases, for example starbucks guy, he was parked totally legitimately. Or how about the chick who was a victim of domestic violence and parked improperly (or maybe illegally) to go into a family member's home to call for assistance (who then told the driver to get a fucking clue and cut it out, but the driver wouldn't comply (not that he had to, just that common sense should have told him to))

If my car was towed while I was at Starbucks, I'd make sure the manager caught hell in such a manner that his other customers would know about it. For fear of losing business or retaliation from the regional director, the manager then makes it right. Perhaps if this happened enough times, he would institute a different policy with the towing service requiring managerial approval. That should be all it takes to solve the problem.

Do we really need a state law for this, or is it just people have to speak up when they've been wronged (as starbucks guy in the OP was).

My God people, we should praise this tow truck driver for his hero like actions. When most people would see a Meals on Wheels delivering free food to needly elderly people this hero saw something not right and took action when most people normal decent folk would look the other way.Today he did his part in the War on Terror, today he drew a line in the sand, and today he said Let Freedom Reign!!! and did his God given right to defend our Laws and our way of life in this country. God Bless America and God Bless him.

Let them keep it commission based - and then have heavy fines for breaking the rules.

Tow trucks are a racket anyway - my brother got in an accident where he flipped the car (how, I don't know, but other than some minor cuts and glass in his hair, he was fine). The responding officer didn't tell us that they have a "system" where they call whichever company is next up on the list of local companies. Oddly enough, it was the most expensive one in the area with high storage fees and one that wouldn't tow to our house (which was much closer than the tow yard).

Come to find out that this same company seems to get called to all accidents after a certain hour. Anecdotal evidence, yeah, but pretty compelling when you've talked to a dozen people, 3 of whom had accidents on the same night, within 2 hours of each other. For the "system" to be honest, there'd have to have been no less than 7 accidents requiring a tow in 2 hours.

My mom was towed illegally here in California and she took the tow company to small claims court (they settled out of court) and we discovered some interesting things about tow laws.

The tow truck operators claim they are regulated under federal law, not state law. Amazingly enough, they say they are regulated under the FAA Act, which has a provision to make air carriers' truck fleets (like FedEx) on the same regulatory level as non-air carriers and that they can only be regulated by the federal government. Under this interpretation of the law, other than basic safety regulations, the tow companies are not governed by state laws. Tow companies have been very successful in using this to defend themselves in court.

There is something floating around Congress which would change this but don't hold your breath. I believe there is a new FAA authorization bill up this year so hopefully it will get fixed then.

As for my mom's case she got some of her money back when she settled out of court, and the rest when the LA city attorney filed fraud charges against the tow operator. The charges weren't that they were towing people illegally, but that they were defrauding people. The tow operators lost their license, had to pay restitution, and do 100+ hours of roadside trash pickup.

Just Oregon? They could use this kind of thing in New York also.

Companies are owned and operated by people. People are flawed. Some people are inclined to be extremely selfish, greedy to the extent they hurt other people. There is no such thing as a free market place since not everyone will act for the greater good or use good judgement. Laws should exist to protect us from those who will not use fairness and good judgment (some laws are made to protect certain businesses which insures there is no free market, by the way). Yes, laws can and are flawed as they are made by humans. So, you can have people getting rich as they hurt others because they can without fear of punishment OR you can have some fighting chance against those that would get rich and hurt others out of their selfishness. Take your pick. I pick laws.

Sorry, but I don't really understand how the Starbucks guy was illegally towed. It seems that there is a system in place to verify who is parked legally and who is parked illegally. By not speaking up when his license plate number was called, he left the tow company with the impression that he was illegally parked. That being the case, the tow driver did his job and towed away a car that he reasonably believed was parked illegally.

Does that suck? Of course. But sometimes mistakes happen. Maybe next time he'll pay a little more attention when a tow driver comes into a business he is patronizing.

"or worse, it might be the manager's car"

Maybe if that happened a few times...

@Pylon83: "Perhaps people shouldn't park illegally/improperly, then they wouldn't have to worry about getting towed."

Yeah, you need to live somewhere with predatory towers for a while. You'll see double-parked cars sitting there blocking traffic for hours while you go around the block 42 times until you get a legal space ... and then you get towed. For, you know, existing.

Predatory towing definitionally doesn't limit itself to illegally-parked cars; their rain falls on the just and unjust alike.

Another common trick is to post a sign saying "only customers of X may park here" or "parking limited to 5 minutes" and then be sure it's completely invisible and obscured by vegetation. Usually the property owner's getting a cut when they do that.

My car was stolen in SF some years ago. I reported it stolen. A week later I got a notice in the mail that it had been towed from the other side of town.

When I went to get the release from SFPD, I told them that it had been reported as stolen. Fortunately I knew that the law did not require me to pay for the tow or storage under the circumstances because the police tried to charge me for it.

The thief had smashed open my steering column so the key mechanism was no longer functional but you could start it by inserting a flat object and twisting. The attendant at the towing lot handed me a screwdriver and said, "Here's your new car key, courtesy of the people of the City and County of San Francisco."

My question is why do cities have to hire private companies to do city work? Tow truck guys are ruthless but shouldn't be roaming the streets doing official city business.

@Corporate_guy: "If you don't give exceptions to delivery drivers, how can they deliver?"

Also, most urban areas write delivery exceptions into law. We had a big thing about this recently because the beer trucks wanted a change in the hours they're allowed to "double park" to deliver in the downtown, which is an older downtown without alleys or loading docks -- all deliveries have to go in the front. Different parts of the city allow deliveries at different times of day to avoid commuter rush hour and other kinds of heavy traffic. It was actually really interesting to read the local ordinances that applied to the various kinds of delivery, and their attempts to balance convenient delivery with efficient traffic.

I can't believe Starbucks would contract with a towing company to do this, even under the best of circumstances. What probably did happen was that the landlord of the strip mall/plaza most likely made the tow contract.

In any event, this is a a really scummy practice. I wouldn't be surprised to hear more stories about physical violence against tow operators.

And BTW-the FAA Act is the same law that has allowed the abuses of the moving industry.

@Shivved:
That's completely ridiculous. There's no way in hell I would patronize an establishment where I constantly had to be listening to see if my car was about to be towed. Most of the time when I visit the coffee shop I'm there to get some coffee and work on something. Last time I was there I was working on learning some new software development tools. That requires some concentration. I don't want to be constantly on edge worrying about whether or not my car will be there when I'm ready to leave.

@Shivved: Im not sure anyone said he was towed illegally. Im surprised that anyone would try to blame him for the mistake though. Well not surprised, disappointed.

@Shivved: Are you kidding?!? As numerous comments pointed out, if the car owner was listening to music/hearing impaired/taking a phone call/in the bathroom, he would not have heard his plate called. Furthermore, not everyone even knows their license plate by heart.

Those things, in this context, add up to a decidedly fishy business agreement.

@Shivved:

I'll restate that it is ridiculous. What about the
patron in the bathroom? Does it violate the ADA
is you have a hearing impaired person's car towed?

They should also add in a clause to prevent the worst kind of predatory towing. Ive heard that some towing companies will use scanners to monitor police communications about cars in accidents then show up and pretend to be the towing company that the person has presumably already called for. Of course their rates are much higher than average and people would never use them if they knew.

@Pylon83: Everyone who comments here should be required to read the definition of the "just world fallacy." Insisting that everyone who has bad things happen to them "deserves it" will not keep bad things from happening to you.

@Shivved: How about if he was taking a dump in the bathroom? Did the tow truck operator stick his head in there and call out the license number? What about if the tow truck operator and car owner were opposite sex, should he go in the wrong restroom to check?

@fcastro: In many cases, they're not doing city business - in the Starbucks example, the company had a contract with the property owner to tow "non-patron" vehicles.

@dddoistutter: While we don't have predatory towing around here, we do have a lot of parking problems. Patrons for a restaurant or bar will often park in what are reserved spots for people who live in the neighborhood. That gets annoying for residents, and because of that most businesses have TONS of signage explaining exactly what spots are for public parking, when they can park there, and warning that they will most definitely be towed if they leave their vehicles parked inappropriately. Friends of mine who liked to laugh about how they were ignoring the warnings only had to get towed once to learn that those signs weren't just there for decoration.

So unless the Starbucks had that sort of explicit "Starbucks Patrons ONLY!" sign, I don't know why anyone would have any fear of getting towed in the first place. And if you don't know that it's a possibility, why would you be paying any attention to some crazy person shouting out random numbers in a coffee shop?

@Pylon83: So it should have been okay for the tow truck driver to try and haul off the Meals on Wheels vehicle just because the woman making the deliveries was not a resident?

I think it's really dishonest of you to change the end of his quotation like that. I'm sure that his reasoning is evil and greedy, but I'd still like to hear what exactly he said so I can form MY OWN OPINION on the matter.

Did you really intentionally misquote someone? That's some real fine journalistic integrity you got there! The operator may be slime, but that's no reason to put words in his mouth. Give him the rope and let him hang himself.

"What right does the government have to tell me how I pay my people, whether hourly, salary or commission? I pay my salespeople on commission. I pay my managers on commission. And I pay my drivers on commission. It gives them the incentive they need to tow any car, at any time, with all but the flimsiest of justifications."

Ok, we may have embellished that last part. He may have yabbered something about an "an incentive-based system to perform." Regardless, the effect is the same.

Retriever Towing needs their money. How dare the Oregon Legislature interfere with them! How dare they!

And about Meals on Wheels, the elderly people shouldn't have aged so that they need people to bring them food.

Excuse me...the Citibank jet is pulling up.

land of opportunity is taking a sad meaning. I hope we can stand up for greater things in the coming years.

@theblackdog:
Yes, I think that's totally appropriate in absence of a special exemption from the lot owner (or the state) for delivery vehicles. Your status as a delivery driver, regardless of for-profit or not-for-profit, does not automatically entitle you to a break from the rules. You wouldn't make the same argument if the meals-on-wheel driver had been pulled over for speeding. If the sign says "Permit parking only", find another place to park if you don't have a permit. I wouldn't have a problem with a delivery exemption (As suggested by Eyebrows), and in fact I think one is probably necessary, but in the absence of one, don't break the rules. I have NO sympathy for the Starbucks guy. The procedure they have in place is entirely reasonable, he's just too important to be bothered with it. When you pull into a lot that says "X Customers Only", it's only reasonable to assume that there will be some sort of procedure in place to ensure that only customers are parking there. He just doesn't like the one they have.

@Aladdyn:
The Tow Truck driver has already gotten the explicit OK to tow from the company via the contract. If Starbucks or whomever wants to have a say on each and every car, they should write that into their contract with the towing company. It's not something the government should be getting involved with.

@alphafemale: all he's seeing is 'the govenment regulating' then the red mist falls...

very sad.

Nothing but raspberries for this troll.

"Snab"?

Troll #2. Don't feed 'em.

Im not one to encourage illegal parking, but this bill is a step in the right direction.

Comission retail sales are good. Comissioned car towing is bad, because the boss and employee have a financial interest in taking cars first, and asking questions later-after getting their $200 tow fee.

I lived in Chicago, which is a good balance IMO.If you legally park , youre safe. If you park in a lot trying to 'sneak in', 'run inside', or take up someone else's paid for parking spot, kiss your car goodbye. As it should be.

@legwork: Can someone please Tow the Troll?